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Suspects in drug party get a break
Thursday, May 11, 2000 By Tom Gibb, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
BELLEFONTE, Pa. -- As it was, the drug overdoses got their share of attention -- what with five people rushed from an off-campus party to a State College-area hospital and Penn State University officials sternly warning that the victims sampled a potentially lethal addition to the recreational drug menu.
Had the party come 24 days later, when a new piece of state drug law took effect, accused drug supplier Kenneth Zukauckas and pal Stefan Moye could have been in deeper trouble.
But on March 19, when a party a block off Penn State's University Park campus became a full medical emergency, the drug at the middle of it all -- a liquid called gamma butyrolactone, GBL for short -- was still legal.
So, District Justice Carmine Prestia decided during a preliminary hearing yesterday that Moye, 23, was guilty only of stupidity. And the prosecutor in the case agreed to drop half the drug-related charges against Zukauckas.
"The prosecution felt it had to go ahead with this," defense attorney Philip Masorti of State College complained during a break in the case. "Four kids went to the hospital. It became news. News people are here today. They felt they had to prosecute."
In court, State College Police Detective William Muse portrayed the situation as weightier than that. Muse said blood tests showed Moye and fellow party-goer Nichole Crawford had enough of the drug to put them in a deep sleep or coma.
"I was unconscious," said Crawford, who testified that doctors had to put a tube down her throat to help her breathe.
Zukauckas, Moye and Crawford live in State College but are not Penn State students.
GBL, used legitimately as a floor-stripping chemical, has been tagged a date rape drug because it knocks out users and robs them of short-term memory. But it evolved into a party drug, sold through Internet sites, under such names as Verve and Blue Nitro.
GBL can leave users euphoric but can dangerously slow the respiratory system and kill, especially when mixed with alcohol, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
An arrest affidavit portrays Zukauckas as an old hand at GBL, saying he admitted to taking it 20 times and showed up at the March 19 party with a bottle he bought over the Internet.
"He said it would make him enjoy himself more, that he'd get kind of drunk out of it," state drug agent Scott Merrill testified. A month-old state law makes it illegal to distribute GBL as anything but a solvent. Because that wasn't the case at the time of the State College party, State College police charged Zukauckas with recklessly endangering four other people for encouraging them to mix alcohol with the GBL.
"If they had been charged under the law today, it'd be like the delivery of a controlled substance, like marijuana," Masorti said.
Police also charged Zukauckas under a drug law that bans palming off even legal substances as illegal drugs. They say Zukauckas admitting telling users that the GBL was gamma hydroxybutyrate, or GHB, a chemical cousin of GBL that was outlawed in Pennsylvania early this year.
In the body, GBL becomes GHB, making GBL all the bigger risk, Assistant District Attorney Karen Kuebler said. GHB works in such small amounts that dosing it out is a science beyond most recreational users, she said.
"And you really can't control it when you're taking GBL because, in different people, GBL metabolizes into GHB at different rates," she said.
Kuebler ended yesterday's hearing by agreeing to clear Zukauckas of charges stemming from two of four overdoses cited in the criminal charges. Prestia, meanwhile, found no evidence that Moye did anything more than overdose.
"Quite frankly, I haven't heard anything that puts me in mind that Mr. Moye is anything more than pretty stupid and took too much of this stuff," he said.
Moye had been charged with distribution of a non-controlled substance, criminal conspiracy and recklessly endangering.
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