Ketamine that's injected during arrests draws new scrutiny

[Judi Lynn]

Patty Nieberg, Associated Press/report For America
Updated 2:58 pm CDT, Saturday, August 22, 2020

DENVER (AP) — Police stopped Elijah McClain on the street in suburban Denver last year after deeming the young Black man suspicious. He was thrown into a chokehold, threatened with a dog and stun gun, then subjected to another law enforcement tool before he died: a drug called ketamine.

Paramedics inject it into people like McClain as a sedative, often at the behest of police who believe suspects are out of control. Officially, ketamine is used in emergencies when there’s a safety concern for medical staff or the patient. But it's increasingly found in arrests and has become another flashpoint in the debate over law enforcement policies and brutality against people of color.

An analysis by The Associated Press of policies on ketamine and cases where the drug was used during police encounters uncovered a lack of police training, conflicting medical standards and nonexistent protocols that have resulted in hospitalizations and even deaths.

On Monday, it will have been a year since McClain, 23, was stopped by officers responding to a 911 call about a suspicious person wearing a ski mask and waving his arms. Police put him in a chokehold twice and multiple officers pressed their body weight into him.

More:
https://www.chron.com/news/article/Ketamine-that-s-injected-during-arrests-draws-new-15507334.php

[Make7]

1. Ketamine can cause short term memory loss. Why would this be used in police encounters? ( n/t )

[Karadeniz]

2. I should hope so! I knew ketamine was used on animals, so I asked my vet about shooting 500

Mgs.. Of ketamine into a human. He thought that seemed extreme.

[d_r]

3. This seems

So draconian, so orewellian, so invasive, so I'll advised.i can't see how this could be possible, legal, constitutional. How could it be possible to force mind altering drugs in someone? Let alone the health risks of administering a prescription medication with no health history, no idea what the person has already taken. It is pure madness.

[Newest Reality]

4. +100 another lump of junk in the Fascist bag of horrors.

[DBoon]

5. The Soviet Union would use psychoactive drugs on dissidents

Sometimes I think they really won the cold war after all

[Cetacea]

6. A nasal form of Ketamine has just been approved as an antidepressant

But it is a much lower dose than what the police are using.

[ret5hd]

7. When did police get prescribing powers.

If I just walked around injecting people with ketamine, even if that person was myself, I'd be in jail for a controlled substance.

[usajumpedtheshark]

8. Paramedics ought to be operating based on approved SOP and I can't see a doctor approving

giving a drug if police ask for it. That is a non-therapeutic use of a drug.