Chester Sam­bra­no

A line from a pop­u­lar lo­cal song says “more zess­ing less stress­ing,” but the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and the Po­lice Ser­vice are ad­vis­ing the pub­lic the do the ex­act op­po­site when it comes to a new drug called the “zess­er” pill.

At yes­ter­day’s week­ly po­lice news, Pub­lic In­for­ma­tion Of­fi­cer of the Po­lice Ser­vice act­ing Su­per­in­ten­dent Wayne Mys­tar said based on in­for­ma­tion re­ceived, the “zess­er pill” is a com­bi­na­tion of two drugs, ec­sta­sy and co­caine and comes in a ei­ther pow­der form or looks like sweets.

He said that the pill was now on the radar of the TTPS.

“We are crit­i­cal­ly con­cerned about it and we are do­ing all in our pow­er to get that dan­ger­ous drug off the streets,” he said.

Mys­tar added that po­lice were now seek­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Min­istries of Health and Ed­u­ca­tion to de­vel­op ed­u­ca­tion pro­gramme to warn cit­i­zens about the dan­gers of the drug.

Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young al­so added his voice to the pub­lic sen­si­ti­sa­tion ef­fort.

In a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, Young said: “This drug has been at­trib­uted to caus­ing se­vere ad­verse phys­i­cal and men­tal be­hav­iour­al re­ac­tions in users.”

Young is ad­vised that the chem­i­cal com­po­si­tion of this drug had not yet been ver­i­fied by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, but in­ves­ti­ga­tions were un­der­way.

He said the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty con­tin­ued to urge the pub­lic to avoid the use of any sub­stances with psy­cho-ac­tive prop­er­ties, in the in­ter­est of their health, safe­ty and well-be­ing.

Some of the most vul­ner­a­ble in so­ci­ety would be the younger gen­er­a­tion and Su­per­in­ten­dent (ag) Mys­tar said the while the drug was most preva­lent in par­ties, it was be­gin­ning to rear its head in the na­tion’s schools.

He at­trib­uted this to the in­fil­tra­tion of gangs and said it was be­ing looked in­to very se­ri­ous­ly.

Mys­tar ad­vised prin­ci­pals to re­port any in­frac­tions to the po­lice as well as urged par­ents to ed­u­cate their chil­dren about the use of drugs.

Over the past few weeks there have been pho­tos be­ing shared on so­cial me­dia de­pict­ing peo­ple ly­ing, seem­ing­ly un­con­scious, who were said to have in­gest­ed the drug.