Suspect Liquid From Party Tested

Local and federal officials Thursday were conducting laboratory tests to determine why New Year’s Eve revelers were overcome with dizziness and shortness of breath after drinking a liquid at a downtown “rave” party.

Investigators are testing the liquid for kava, an extract from the root of a plant indigenous to the South Pacific islands, and the drug gammahydroxybutyrate (GHB), a common drug found on the dance club scene that can cause disorientation and blackouts. Officials also said party-goers may have mixed the liquid with other drugs.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned consumers not to drink vials of the liquid--labeled “Orange fX Rush,” “Lemon fX Drop” or “Cherry fX Bomb”--until it has finished lab tests.

At least 31 party-goers at the Grand Olympic Auditorium were treated at hospitals for symptoms including nausea and accelerated heart rates.

Los Angeles police officials singled out kava, an herbal relaxant, as the “problem” component among the herbs and chemicals listed on the small vials handed out to scores of party-goers. However, they said they were not certain that the drink contained the ingredients listed on the label and would wait for FDA lab results.

The LAPD’s lab is testing the liquid for the presence of GHB.

“Taken in excessive amounts or with other drugs, kava is likely to produce the various symptoms seen in the victims from New Year’s Eve,” said police spokesman Ed Funes.

A number of experts disputed that assertion, saying it was unlikely that acute reactions of the kind suffered by victims at the concert could come from small vials of kava. They noted that kava was served as a ceremonial drink to former President Lyndon B. Johnson and his wife on a visit to American Samoa and to Pope John Paul II on a visit to Fiji.

“I don’t think kava’s the issue,” said Mark Blumenthal, executive director of the Austin, Texas-based American Botanical Council. “I suspect there’s something else in there.”

An estimated 10,000 people attended the annual “Circa--In Seventh Heaven” event, a multistage dance concert with dozens of deejays, at the Olympic. Fire officials ordered the concert shut down after they responded to an emergency call and found four people who had stopped breathing.

As the event broke up, revelers scuffled with police, who fired rubber bullets to disperse the crowd. Party-goers rocked an MTA bus and threw stones and bottles at police officers and patrol cars. The melee lasted until 1:30 a.m.

One of the concert promoters, who identified himself only as Reza, said the pandemonium inside the hall erupted only 25 minutes after the event started, as a girl who had been dancing crumpled to the floor.

“We approached her, and she said, ‘I took that fX [stuff],’ ” he said.

The fX vendor, listed as Biolife Bioproducts Ltd. of San Diego on the label, had set up a booth alongside several other tables offering T-shirts. Security guards escorted the vendor out about 8:30 p.m., Reza said. But he said the vendor, Dan Xavieris, later distributed hundreds of vials of the liquid to revelers waiting in line to get into the concert.

“We didn’t realize he was handing the stuff out until it was too late,” Reza said.

Owners of the Dr. Free Clouds Mixing Lab record store in Costa Mesa said Xavieris brought them five vials of fX one week before the event. Two employees who followed the instructions on the label and each drank one vial vomited, said owner Helen Liang.

“We told him that people who work for us got really sick. He acted really surprised,” she said. The owners, who met with FDA investigators Thursday, said they had thrown out the other vials.

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Xavieris, who describes himself as a San Diego chemist and the developer of fX, denied that the liquid would cause severe reactions if taken according to the instructions.

“The ‘suggested use’ pretty much exonerates us as far as our attorneys are concerned,” he said. “If [party-goers] collapsed, they took more than the appropriate dosage or they took something else with it. . . . It’s a very efficacious product. It’s not to be trifled with.”

Xavieris said that he brought 9,000 vials of fX to the concert and that the LAPD confiscated 8,100. The rest, he said, were handed out or taken by revelers when security guards took him and his staff away for questioning.

He said his 6-week-old business would “very likely” collapse with or without FDA action. He laid blame for the New Year’s Eve incident on revelers who didn’t read the label, and on their parents.

“There are people who have kids who go to ‘raves’ who are in complete denial about what their kids do there,” he said.

The fX label suggests that consumers take “one great-tasting vial on a four-hour empty stomach. No more than two vials per eight-hour period.” It warns that fX may cause nausea, but invites: “Feel the surprising fX of a pure new life today!”

Other makers of herbal substances associated with “rave” parties sought Thursday to distance themselves from fX and Biolife Bioproducts.

“It looks like a fly-by-night company,” said Sean Shayan, president of Global World Media, which produces the product Herbal Ecstasy. Shayan also said the reactions of some revelers were consistent with those that sometimes come from the use of GHB, and suggested that they may have ingested both substances.

“If you take GHB with anything else, it’ll tweak you,” he said.

Mind-altering substances have been a mainstay of youth party scenes for decades, but recently a wider variety of drugs has emerged on the scene.

“In general, kids use drugs in party settings that give them a sense of disinhibition, euphoria or well-being,” said Sgt. Rudy Lovio of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Narcotics Intelligence Bureau.

Herbal drugs, even in very high dosages, would not produce the kinds of effects reported by those who took fX, Lovio said. Ticketmaster announced Thursday that it would refund the price of the New Year’s Eve tickets, which cost $20 to $25.

Two revelers who suffered from respiratory and cardiovascular trouble at the party were released from a hospital by Thursday night.