UM Police Investigating Two Reports of Possible ‘Date Rape’ Drugs Placed in Drinks
The University of Montana put out a warning this week, after two female students reported situations that may have involved a drug like Rohypnol or Ketamine, often referred to as “date rape drugs.”
“University officials made the decision to send the alert to our campus community and it was simply to apprise our students about a couple of reports of concerns about tampering with drinks from our students,” said University of Montana Communications Director Paula Short. “So far, tampering has not been confirmed, but, nonetheless, we felt like it was enough of a concern that we just wanted to raise the situational awareness for our students.”
University of Montana Police Chief Marty Ludemann says one of the students went in for drug testing at St. Patrick Hospital, but there was no evidence of a drug. Despite the lack of evidence, Ludemann says these types of drugs are very difficult to detect because they leave the system within a few hours of consumption. Short says the two reports were enough to issue a public warning.
“They both happened in a relatively short period in the last week to ten days,” Short said. “In the first instance a student became very ill shortly after consuming a beverage and other circumstances around that instance led them to raise the specter of the possibility that maybe their drink had been tampered with.”
An investigation is still underway. Ludemann says the two reports are from two different individuals and that they were drinking at two different off-campus Missoula establishments when they became ill.