|
?:reviewBody
|
-
Jenkem (or jekem) is the common name given to an inhalant made by fermenting raw sewage (i.e., fecal matter and urine), reportedly used as a cheap means of producing a dissociative or hallucinogenic high (particularly by children in third world countries). A Collier County, Florida, police informational bulletin about Jenkem was widely circulated via e-mail in October 2007: Example: [Collected via e-mail, October 2007] But evidence that jenkem use is a significant phenomenon in the U.S. (or indeed, anywhere in the world) or that the substance can even product the effects described is scant. The informational bulletin was apparently issued merely on the basis of a few high school students' having mentioned hearing about jenkem in schoolyard chat, and its contents originated with a source who said he had fabricated them: Descriptions of jenkem starting appearing in the press in the mid-1990s, most of them merely referencing it in passing, and nearly all of them specifically mentioning its use as being unique to street children in Lusaka, the capital city of Zambia. The earliest reference to jenkem we've found so far comes from a 1995 Inter Press Service (IPS) wire report: Jenkem use also turned up in a brief 1999 BBC News article on the subject: Those few mid-1990s articles are the only substantive information about jenkem use we've turned up so far, and even those are difficult to verify. We've haven't found anything to substantiate the claim that youngsters in the U.S. are indulging in jenkem to the extent that it is now a popular drug in American schools, other than some vague statements from drug enforcement officials who assert the phenomenon is real because they've heard rumors about it:
(en)
|
![[This page as RDF]](http://data.gesis.org/claimskg/static/rdf-icon.gif){kind=icon}