Drug Delirium

A man died in police custody in Cornelius, Oregon the other day. There have a number of deaths of people in the custody of the Portland Police in recent years. Some of them look pretty stinking bad*, so something like this makes me perk up my ears.

But this was in Cornelius, a small town 20 miles West of Portland. It's not quite a suburb, there is still farmland between here and there. And then we get these reports in the paper. I found them quite illuminating.

From a story by Kurt Eckert in the Hillsboro Argus:

The Oregon state medical examiner says a well-known but unusual deadly side effect of certain narcotics is often a contributor to the death of people in custody, and probably contributed to the April 10 death of a 24-year-old man in Cornelius.

From an earlier story (?!?) we have:

Preliminary indications from an autopsy show the Cornelius man who died in police custody early Saturday may have been under the influence of hallucinogenic mushrooms.

Googling "drug delirium" turns up Excited Delirium.org. Their main focus seems to be on cocaine, not hallucinogens. This stuff is still on the cutting edge.

On the other hand, there was a glowing report of hallucinogen use in The Oregonian the other day**, and maybe someone in the coroners office took exception to the tone of that article and decided to put his/her own spin on the story. I mean the actual test results won't be released for weeks, and by then most everyone will have forgotten about it.

* Hopefully the Portland Police will get sorted out and things will get better.

** Actually it's from the NY Times. I swear I saw it in the local paper, but once again a search of The Oregonians web site failed to turn up anything. Google found it for me.