Lindsay Venter (32), also known as Rocky, died in the Middelburg Hospital on Sunday 8 June. A trusted source says that Venter together with two other addicts showed worrying symptoms of using an unknown “killer” drug that resulted in them ending up in hospital.

All three addicts got their drugs from the same dealer in Mhluzi. Symptoms indicating that something was seriously wrong surfaced a couple of days after they used the drugs. Symptoms that proved to be fatal for Rocky.

Experts are worried that heroin users in Middelburg might be the guinea pigs of a new type of drug.

“These people stand a good chance of dying anyway. But these three cases worry me. This drug had such a devastating effect on the users that I fear after one hit, it might be too late,” a medical expert said on condition of anonymity.

All three patients treated, first complained of head and body ache. When they were admitted to hospital tests showed that their organs have started to give in.

Rocky ended up in the provincial hospital. Another young man was more fortunate. He is currently receiving private medical care. According to information received he has a severe infection in his heart, where some of the drug he injected into his veins, crystallised.

Numerous courses of antibiotics have not succeeded in loosening all the crystals. It seems that once a crystal is loosened, it moves into the patient’s lungs, causing a new infection.

Rehabilitation centres have alerted the Middelburg Observer that dealers in Middelburg are mixing heroin with cat (methcathinone) and even with cocaine. This is done to make it more addictive.

A person involved with the rehabilitation of addicts now fear that something more lethal is being mixed with heroin.

“I have heard that they put phosphor, which they get from flat screen TVs, with the heroin. How true this is, I don’t know. No one knows because there is no way to test what exactly these people are injecting into their bodies. All we see is the after effects, of organs failing and young people dying.”

• An experiment done by Eye Witness News at the University of Johannesburg rubbished the flat screen substance abuse allegations. They tested the magnesium oxide layer in television screens, put between the electrodes and the pixels to keep them from overheating. Tests show that the substance is similar to milk of magnesia and harmless to human consumption.

• Internet website HowStuffWorks.com shows that there is phosphor inside plasma television screens. It is plated inside hundreds if not thousands of tiny light bulbs inside the pixel cells and would be very difficult to get hold of without getting shards of glass in the mixture.

• Vuttage, an online magazine, claims that nyaope smokers use the phosphor found in TV screens as an ingredient. They say that the same phosphor can be found in old fluorescent light bulbs and washing powder.