In Singapore, they’re sold as K-pods. In Hong Kong, they’re called space oil. And in Japan, it’s zombie juice.
A new craze is sweeping the youth of the Asia-Pacific: vape canisters containing etomidate. We’re out with vaping tobacco, it’s as old-timey as grandpa playing Steely Dan records. Now it’s all about the zombie juice!
Etomidate was originally used an anaesthetic for sedating patients during certain short medical procedures. It has an advantage over other anaesthetics in that it only lightly impacts your blood pressure. But, like many other substances de jour, it’s now found a new life as a marketed psychoactive drug. The effects kick in within seconds: a sensation of light-headedness, as if you are floating; and a sense of numbness, euphoria, and detachment from the worldly realm, perhaps similar to ketamine or nitrous oxide (laughing gas).
After about twenty minutes, the comedown can be less pleasant. The partaker may feel like they’re about to puke, suffer blackouts and convulsions, and struggle to speak or move normally.
“It can be difficult for people who use etomidate to track how much they have used, and this can make it very easy for someone to take too much and have adverse effects,” said Sarah Helm, executive director of the New Zealand Drug Foundation, where etomidate vapes has also been found in the past year.
“This is particularly problematic because it wears off quickly, causing people to want to re-dose. Internationally, there have been cases of hospitalisations and even fatalities.”
As a new phenomenon, recreational etomidate is still under-researched. But the studies we have so far suggest prolonged consumption and larger doses can cause seizures or convulsions, adrenal suppression (an imbalance of certain hormones, which in rare instances leads to organ failure), brain damage, and hypokalemia (low potassium levels).
Here comes the crackdown
Unsurprisingly, this new drug has caused alarm. In Singapore, viral videos showed youngsters behaving erratically while under the influence of K-pods (short for ‘ketamine pods’); last year, a nineteen-year-old girl plunged to her death off the top of an apartment block, allegedly after vaping K-pods. In July, a random sample of 100 confiscated vapes in Singapore found that a third had traces of etomidate.
Singapore being Singapore, the government came down on it in a typically heavy-handed fashion. Etomidate was made a Class C drug in September, meaning sellers risk up to ten years imprisonment and five cane whacks; importing it (for instance, from Malaysia) can mean up to twenty years in prison.
Meanwhile, vapers risk a fine of up to 700 Singaporean dollars ($540 USD) along with several months in the Drug Rehabilitation Centre (DRC). These are prisons in all-but-name, where ‘patients’ are crammed into concrete cells with no beds, with no idea on how long they’ll be staying there (which can be up to a year).
This comes on top of a general war on vapes, which were banned in Singapore in 2018 for being a perceived gateway to nicotine addiction. This is despite research suggesting that vapes could be an effective form of nicotine harm reduction. While not without their own problems, they are certainly healthier than inhaling tar into your lungs and can help wean heavy smokers off cigarettes. And while only an estimated 16.5% of Singaporean smoke tobacco, the value of harm reducing options is clear.
To stop vaping, schools already used saliva tests to pick up nicotine; this will now be expanded to urine testing to detect K-pod usage.
End ALL vaping
“Lately, Singapore’s had a problem with vapes laced with etomidate,” explained MF, an anonymised young Singaporean well-acquainted with the underground drug scene.
“It became a problem once people started dying from it, and you see zombie-like people roaming the streets, on the buses and trains and roads. There have been reports to show that even primary school kids are on it. The government has used this opportunity to crack down heavily on all vape use, be it drug-laced or not.”
Merely having a vape can now earn you a spell in a DRC.
“I just hope I can use this time to say that I think it’s fuckin’ fantastic,” MF added sarcastically, “how we’re looking at this and thinking ‘oh these people are doing drugs, drugs are bad,’ and not instead questioning ‘hey, actually, why the fuck are these kids turning themselves into such a sorry state, numbing themselves silly with these etomidate vapes when it’s clearly no good?’”
“The etomidate situation, if you ask me, is a reflection of the reality of our society in Singapore, where it’s so intense and stressful that really even kids, along with adults, are screaming for anything just to take the edge off the pain and pressure with having to cope and survive the environment we live in,” MF continued.
“Sure, people will always point to the safety and cleanliness and order of Singapore, but the flip side to this is the suppression and the control we’re all under, along with the need to work and work intensely just to survive with our already crazy and still increasing cost of living. And with how media is controlled, as an outsider or just someone who isn’t in tune to the depths of our situation, people both in and out of Singapore don’t realize just how tied up and suffocated people over here can be.”
Regional war on etomidate
Of course, Singapore’s not the only government to ban K-pods. Etomidate was originally classed as a “Part I Poison” in Hong Kong, with two years’ prison penalty for dealers. But in February, it was branded a “dangerous drug” on par with cocaine, upgraded to life imprisonment as punishment. Around the same time, South Korea added it to their narcotic blacklist, while Japan formally banned so-called zombie vapes in May.
That hasn’t stopped illicit suppliers. Hong Kong police have admitted they found 250,000 etomidate vape cartridges in just the first six months of this year alone – 35 times as many as discovered in that same period last year. Etomidate is diverted from legitimate medical stocks: in South Korea, one drug ring even set up a fake clinic as a front. There’s also clandestine factories producing bootleg zombie juice completely off-the-books, meaning there’s no oversight or quality control as to the final product, which may be even more toxic and poisonous than K-pods are already.
In New Zealand, etomidate is listed as a prescription-only medicine. While the etomidate vapes in circulation are of dubious legality, Helm warns that an outright ban will push consumers into the shadows.
“Because we have outdated legislation – the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975 – banning substances is one of the few interventions the law offers,” she said.
“However, criminalising people for using etomidate could have unintended consequences of preventing them from talking about their use or seeking help.”
