New York club kids who use the party drug Molly because they think it’s pure ecstasy are often being peddled deadly “bath salts” by ruthless dealers, the DEA told The Post.
The dangerous narcotic — which causes a violent, meth-like high — has killed at least one reveler this year and is being eyed in the deaths of two partiers at the Electric Zoo festival on Randall’s Island two weeks ago.
“Kids think ‘Molly’ is a pure, safe ecstasy, but it’s not,” said DEA Special Agent Erin Mulvey. “It’s not pure, it’s not safe and it’s not even ecstasy.”
Known to drug regulators as methylone — and exported in bulk from China — the salts caused the agonizing death of Matthew Rybarczyk, 20, of Staten Island, after a June 15 rave on Governors Island.
“There were bags and bags pumping things into him, and the blood was coming out of his mouth, his nose,” Peggy Rybarczyk remembered yesterday of watching her grandson die slowly in his hospital bed.
The two young people who died at the Electric Zoo music fest — recent Syracuse University grad Jeffrey Russ, 23, and University of New Hampshire student Olivia Rotondo, 20 — may have also ingested the salts, though toxicology results are pending, sources told The Post.
Two others who were stricken at the festival admitted to drug use — also believed to be a substance resembling bath salts, sources told The Post.
Bath salts, which can be swallowed, snorted, injected or dissolved in water, has a similarly euphoric effect as ecstasy — but can also cause psychotic symptoms like agitation, paranoia and hallucinations. The drug is federally banned from sale in stores but is widely available on the Internet.
It has yet to be declared a controlled substance under state law, which has greatly hampered prosecution efforts.
“We’re seeing a proliferation of it,” citywide Special Narcotics Prosecutor Bridget Brennan told The Post. “We urgently need a law that would allow us to prosecute the sale of this deadly substance.”
A bill criminalizing the drug has sat since June 19 in the state Senate majority office, awaiting forwarding to the desk of Gov. Cuomo, who has said he’ll sign it.
“I think it’s absolutely horrible,” Rybarczyk said. “These drugs are killing our children.”
Since the Electric Zoo overdoses, the NYPD has made club drugs a priority.
In a recent Harlem bust, cops seized 40 grams of ecstasy and four firearms — including a submachine gun.