The Life & Birth of Roofie

The other day I was at the pub with my friend and she mentioned that her dad got her a pocket rohypnol drug test kit. Cute. (kind of like this one here)

And this got us to musing about where Rohypnol came from to begin with. My vote was military. I mean, who else is keen to make people all pliant and erase their memories? Helloooo Darpa how are you doing? Obviously!

My friend however, thought it was the medical industry. This conjured up images of black market organ trafficking and eeeevil surgeons rubbing their latex gloved paws together in glee at all the kidneys they could harvest with drugged-out consent. Turns out she was right.

Rohypnol is its trademark name. Roofie its street name. But its real name is flunitrazepam and it was developed by Roche in the 1970s “for the management of insomnia and induction of anaesthesia” according to their website.

Here’s where it gets interesting. First, it’s not approved by the FDA and is an illegal drug in the US but it’s available by private prescription in the UK - mostly for colonoscopies. Norway and Sweden withdrew Rohypnol but then later reintroduced it under a different guise: Flunipam and flunitrazepam respectively. And I didn’t know this but Kurt Cobain OD’d on a cocktail of flunitrazepam and champagne weeks before his death. Still, I wouldn’t stock up on those stocking stuffer quite yet. The Association of Chief Police Officers reported that none of the 120 cases from November 2004 to October 2005 were linked to rohypnol.