Report: LSD Sickens 5th-Graders

Several fifth graders became ill after apparently ingesting something another student had brought to an elementary school in the town of Arleta, Calif., reports CBS Correspondent Juan Fernandez of station KCBS-TV in Los Angeles. reports.

According to a doctor at Providence Holy Cross Medical Center, the children were seeing colors and things that weren't there, leading them to believe that the substance may have been the hallucinatory drug LSD.

Fourteen students at Haddon Avenue Elementary School in the San Fernando Valley, north of Los Angeles became dizzy and began hallucinating after eating the substance Wednesday afternoon.

Los Angeles Unified School District spokeswoman Socorro Serrano said the 9- and 10-year-old children believed it was cocaine. One child went home sick and 13 others were later taken to two hospitals after illness began to spread.

Three youngsters were hospitalized overnight for observation.
Police said they believe a fourth-grade girl found a box containing a powder and a vial of liquid in a box near her home. Police Lt. Rick Papke said some of the children ingested the substance, while others licked it.

"They were completely disoriented, acting irrationally," Papke said. "Their symptoms were of those who had ingested a controlled substance."

Police thought the substance was cocaine after receiving reports that what the children ingested was a white substance in the form of a rock. But the children had eaten or destroyed the evidence, so lab tests were needed.

Late Wednesday, it was still not known exactly what the substance was, though hospital officials said they ruled out marijuana, amphetamines and PCP, or phencyclidine, the "angel dust" that acts as a stimulant and depressant.

Dr. Michael Sarti of Providence-Holy Cross said he believed the children tasted LSD.

"It sounds like a hallucinogen, like LSD," he said. "We had a hiatus on LSD, but it seems to be coming back in vogue."

Nine-year-old Edgar Macias said he did not try the substance but saw it being circulated in his classroom during a morning journal-writing session.

"There was this girl who brought it in. She had something in her hand and she was breaking it apart and handing it away to everybody," he said. "Then they all started getting dizzy. One kid was crying."

Macias said the girl who brought the substance was among those affected.

"She was writing in her journal," the boy said. "She said she had a hard time spelling her name."

Anxious parents gathered outside the school.

"This school is pretty safe," said Edwin Ramirez, a parent who volunteers to help provide security at Haddon. "The worst thing we've had here before was a kid with a broken finger. I don't know how this could have happened."

Serrano said the school of 1,200 students has a zero-tolerance policy for dugs and a student who brings them on campus can be expelled. No disciplinary action had been taken against the girl by late Wednesday.

Written by Anthony Breznican