Today Show Worried About Cough Syrup Drink “Sizzurp”

NBC’s Today show wants to make sure
you know
about the sizzurps:

Attention, parents: Young people are using a drink with
a funny-sounding name — “sizzurp” — to get high, and the
consequences are anything but amusing.

Doctors are warning that the drug, which is made by combining soda,
candy and prescription cough syrup with codeine in it, can be
deadly. 

“This is a very dangerous drug,” said Dr. Robert Glatter of Lenox
Hill Hospital in New York. “It can lead to seizures and essentially
lead you to stop breathing.”

Sizzurp
is a drink that includes cough syrup (for the codeine, as opposed
to the DXM) for its mind-altering effects. Today’s national
investigative correspondent doesn’t offer any statistics on
fatalities or even hospital visits for cough syrup ingestion, as a

recent study on the risks of shopping carts (“estimated
530,494” injured children over 21 years ), did. The story does
mention a DEA report that one in ten teenagers admit (or claim!) to
have used cough syrup to get high, and reports that sizzurp was
“attributed in the deaths” of two rappers, DJ Screw, the Houston
rapper who actually popularized the drink to a wider audience, in
2000, and Pimp C in 2007. No distinction is made that the deaths
were overdoses with, in the first case, a mix of drugs, and the
second, pre-existing sleep apnea.

I get it. It’s a drink that includes a bunch of substances
(cough syrup*, candy, soda) that are generally legal, but to
varying degrees also frowned upon by the kind of people who like
the idea of controlling substnaces. Cough syrup, thanks to
fearmongering like this, is an increasingly controlled substance
already.  So although Google searches for sizzurp peaked almost
a year ago, when the rapper Lil Wayne’s hospitalization was linked
in the press to abuse of the drink (also mentioned by Today), it’s
still fresh ground for the kind of anti-drug crowd that finds
“sizzurp” to be a funny name.

Actual drug warriors have put sizzurp on their watchlists years
ago. A 2006 ABC News report warning about the “culture” of sizzurp
noted:

Authorities have recently tried to crack down on the
drug, but while the crackdown has made it harder to get, it’s also
made it easier and more profitable to traffic. “A year and a half
to two years ago the price for a pint of codeine promethazene cough
syrup was about $20 and was called a deuce, and for 16 oz, which
was called a PT cruiser, would go for about $120 to $125,” says [a
professor at the University of Texas School of Public Health,
Ron] Peters. “Now a pint of codeine promethazene would go for
anything from about $250 all the way up to $350.” Pharmacists,
doctors and drug dealers from other states are getting into the
act, says Peters.

We have always
been at war with cough syrup.