Legal Chemicals Being Used for Date Rape.

• Position: Brief Article

Twenty states have passed laws to protect women from the effects of the date rape drug, GHB, but almost as soon as the statutes were signed, criminals found ways to use perfectly legal substitutes. These odorless, tasteless chemicals mix easily in drinks and render the victim unconscious. GHB also has cropped up on college campuses and at rave (all-night dance) parties.

To combat these GHB substitutes, legislators in Pennsylvania strengthened their "analogue" statutes by enlarging them to include chemicals that have "substantially similar structures or substantially similar effects."

A prior state law, one of the strongest date rape statutes in the nation, makes use of any substance to facilitate sexual assault a first-degree felony. Senator Jane Earll and Representative Thomas Gannon used that law as a springboard to successfully draft the new law that bans analogue drugs such as the GHB substitutes. The lawmakers also said that legislators should turn to an overlooked part of the federal Controlled Substances Act, which allows enactment of a "controlled substance analogue statute."

One of the more worrisome analogues of...