Quoted from Parent

What do you think happens to a body during a drug overdose? Why do you think a cardiologist is concerned about the large number of young adults that he saw as a result of this festival. These kids were having MIs--Myocardialinfarctions--that a heart attack. They had elevated troponins, elevated CPKs. And there is a question whether all the drugs they took were by choice. That is why people want this looked into-not to ban anything-to make sure that next time there aren't people being painted with LSD that they thought was just glitter paint, to try to prevent people who just want to some some pot from being squirted in the face by a water gun full of drugs, and to even try to keep the drugs that are being done the drug that it is suppose to be and isn't laced with unknown substance.

When someone is concerned about something and wants it looked into it docent automatically mean they want it banned.

Quoted from Shadow

Some of the people who ODed were in my opinion not "kids". The first to die was 29, the girl in the car wreck was 26, and the other rollover accident on the Thruway was a mid 20's driver.

Quoted from A Better Rotterdam

So once again where's the proof, my best friend is an EMT working the event and claims there were far more calls from downtown Schenectady per night than from Bisco.. Perhaps we should shut down Schenectady!!!!  Your spreading rumors and ideas that don't relate to what actually happened in any way shape or form. There's allot of stupid people out there that believe BS stories like the ones you are spewing.

Quoted from Parent

Proof? I think breaking into the medical records system and posting health information online to prove a point would be frowned upon. If you don't want to believe me fine. I know what I saw; I know what I heard. I don't know the number of EMS calls, I was at the hospital, nit with EMS.  I would hope though that there would be more calls from Schenectady...it's a larger population...with a high number of chronically ill and elderly...that does not change the fact that a high number of kids came into the hospital in extremely severe condition. How many 20 year olds do you think typically come into the ER in near death situations on an average weekend...not many. It is not that these cases outnumbered anything else in the hospital. It is that the number treated for this age range was way too high.

Quoted from Shadow

At what age is a person responsible for their actions and not someones elses responsibility.

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Giving credit where it is due at Camp Bisco

    Concerning the Camp Bisco event, in my letter to the Duanesburg Town Board last year, I pointed out my problem and concerns about the traffi c fiasco, but this year I feel that I must give credit where credit is due.
    What a difference a year makes! Kudos to “the team” who worked tirelessly to make this year’s event flow more smoothly.
    Many thanks to: the Duanesburg Planning Board: Sandra Scott, Carl Wiedemann and attorney Terresa Bakner; Frank Potter of Indian Lookout Country Club and his crew; MCP owners and producers; Creighton Manning and the Traffi c Engineering Firm.
    I am sure there are still are few glitches to be worked out, one being the backup at traffic lights on the Sunday exodus. Overall, I give “the team” a resounding score of 95.

ADELE M. SMITH
Duanesburg

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DUANESBURG
Camp Bisco injuries spark public fear
Woman in coma cited as example; drug use common
BY JUSTIN MASON Gazette Reporter

    Heather Bynum was excited to return to Camp Bisco in July.
    The personable 24-year-old hair dresser from Schenectady had attended the three-day music festival in 2011 and had a blast. This year, she decided to grab VIP tickets and start camping out when the gates at the sprawling 200-acre Indian Lookout Country Club opened the evening of July 12, nearly 18 hours before the first musical acts were to begin.
    Then some-t h i n g w e n t  dreadfully awry. Bynum had a massive seizure and stopped breathing.
    Emergency responders were able to revive her and she was rushed to Ellis Hospital, where doctors made a grave assessment of her condition. She had more seizures, suffered a heart attack, sustained liver damage and lapsed into a coma.
    Nearly a month later, Bynum remains unresponsive in critical condition at Ellis. She relies on a respirator to breathe for her and a feeding tube for her nutrition.
    Earlier this week, she started breathing on her own for short periods of time — a sign that has left her friends and family somewhat hopeful. But any hope for the future is tempered by the realization that any path to recovery will be a long one.
    “The prognosis? We just don’t know,” said Richard DiCristofaro, Bynum’s longtime boss at the Wedgeway Barber Shop on Erie Boulevard. “They all say it will be a long road back.”
    Now DiCristofaro and others close to Bynum are looking for answers. They want to know what dangerous substances were being introduced into the massive crowd gathered for the festival and why the town agreed to have such an event that left fans like Bynum clinging to life.
    “Every county in your neighborhood is talking about this fi asco,” DiCristofaro told members of the Duanesburg Town Board Thursday.
    Town Supervisor Rene Merrihew heard the complaints and offered sympathies for the injured girl. But she also explained that the board has no influence over permitting for the festival, a duty that falls to the town Planning Board.
    "This board has no say," she said.
DRUG CASUALTIES
    Bynum and several others at the festival were stricken after being sprayed with an unknown liquid, according to DiCristofaro. He said the results of her toxicology test are pending, but there is concern she may have been poisoned with strychnine.
    In total, Ellis treated 35 people from Camp Bisco. Of those treated, 12 were admitted, mostly for drug overdoses.
    So far, authorities have only attributed one death to the festival. William P. Graumann, 29, of New Jersey, who was helping set up concessions, was found dead in his tent after apparently overdosing on drugs sometime before the grounds opened.
    Planning for the festival proved controversial largely because of the number of people who attended in 2011. Members of the Duanesburg Planning Commission threatened to revoke the permit for the festival unless a number of traffic and quality-of-life issues were remedied.
    But a professional traffi c plan was implemented and many of the issues were resolved. Yet some are now questioning whether the event itself isn’t leaving an unsavory stain on Duanesburg. ........................>>>>....................>>>>............................http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....r01301&AppName=1

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A deadly mix
Drugs at Bisco, other ‘dubstep’ scenes uncontrolled, recipe for tragedies
BY JUSTIN MASON Gazette Reporter

    The booming bass and syncopated rhythms of dubstep seem tailor-made for taking dissociative — dangerous, reality-bending — drugs.
    While LSD is a popular choice for fans of the neon-lit musical style born from the rave scene, Ketamine seems to be one drug of choice among dubstep fans. The powerful anesthetic is almost a household staple whenever electronica festivals and concerts set up shop, according to fans familiar with the drug scene unfolding at these events and the physicians treating overdose cases.
    “The dissociation that it gives fits perfectly with the dark, mechanical feeling of the music,” wrote one anonymous poster on dubstepforum.com. “And the psychedelic neon-like effects of the drug fits perfectly with the alien feeling of dubstep. In fact, I find that dubstep is the exact same feeling that Ketamine gives: A tension between wilderness and mechanization, a tension between being hollow and being holy.”
    So-called “molly” — or pure MDMA — is another choice substance that seems to ride tandem with dubstep and other electronic dance music acts. The drug commonly known as Ecstasy joins a veritable pharmacy of other pills — from Benzodiazepine sedatives, including the anti-anxiety drug Xanax, to narcotic opiates such as Hydrocodone — that arrive with fans descending upon a stadium or campground hosting such concerts, according to local authorities who contended with a dubstep festival recently in the Duanesburg hamlet of Mariaville.
    But these drugs and others typically circulating through these mass gatherings often carry some very serious sideeffects. And when such drugs are taken together, they can kill.
    Authorities have started to identify electronica concerts as ones that draw a distinct class of drug dealers and users. State police Capt. Robert Patnaude said most concerts bring in a degree of illegal substances, but the ones featuring dubstep artists seem to go beyond the norm.
    “It’s part of the scene,” he said.
BISCO INCIDENTS
    At Camp Bisco at the Indian Lookout Country Club, a toxic drug cocktail was said to cause the death of Bily Graumann more than a day before the first bass drops began rattling over the sleepy hamlet in mid-July. Friends last saw the 29-year-old New Jersey man stumbling to his tent during the late evening and found him dead the following morning, according to state police. Graumann, a popular fi gure among the Bisco crowd, was helping set up an event at the three-day electronica festival. Investigators later found Xanax and Hydrocodone pills in his tent, along with marijuana.
    Less than a day after Graumann was discovered, 24-year-old Heather Bynum of Schenectady suffered a seizure that left her in a coma, which persists. Family members believe she was sprayed with an unidentified substance shortly before she stopped breathing during the early morning hours before the festival began; how she ingested the toxic substance has not been identified by hospital offi cials.
    Less than two weeks after Bisco wrapped up, tragedy struck another electronic dance music festival in the suburban town of Mansfi eld, Mass., about a half-hour southwest of Boston. The all-day Identity Fest at the ComCast Center left nearly two dozen people hospitalized and resulted in the overdose deaths of two men: 19-year-old Connor Brandon and 27-year-old Dominic Impelizzieri.
    Impelizzieri, of Syracuse, was a decorated Marine who served in Iraq and was preparing to attend Lehman College in New York City this fall. He suffered cardiac arrest at the concert and later died at Rhode Island Hospital.
    Brandon, of Acton, Mass., had attended Bisco this year and was planning to seek treatment for his drug use this summer, his mother later told the Boston Globe. Instead, she said her son attended Identity Fest and died of cardiac arrest after ingesting a mix of Ecstasy, amphetamines and marijuana.
    “There always ends up being a fair amount of accidental overdoses at these,” she told the Globe last month. “What are we doing?”
DEADLY SCENE
    For some musicians, the heavy drug culture that continues to flourish with the electronica scene has become unsettling reality at massive festivals like Bisco. Dan Gerken, a guitarist for the Albanyarea progressive rock band Timbre Coup, said part of the problem is that the demand for hard drugs at such concerts is being fi lled by unsavory entrepreneurs — dealers unconcerned about the type of substance they’re selling and what impact it will ultimately have on the person using it.
    “They’ll cut corners or do anything they can do to make a profi t,” he said.
    Timbre Coup played at Bisco in 2010 and 2011, but made a decision not to return this year. In part, Gerken said, the group didn’t want to gravitate toward a scene that was increasingly characterized by hard drug usage and the resulting overdoses.
    “To think that a half hour away, kids are OD’ing at a festival we used to play at is really quite bothering,” he said.
    Both Live Nation, the company organizing Identity Fest, and MCP Presents, the producer of Camp Bisco, declined to comment about the drug culture at their respective events or the medical emergencies. Nevertheless, the two events had eerily similar troubles with drug overdoses.
    Bisco had 35 fans seek medical treatment at Ellis Hospital over three days, with 12 being admitted — primarily for drug overdoses. Identity Fest sent 22 people to hospitals, with four being admitted in critical condition, excluding the two fans who died.
    Mansfield Police Chief Arthur O’Neill acknowledged there was a significant amount of drug activity during the event and that it seemed to attract hard substances. He said he was struck by how nonchalant some fans seemed to be about taking drugs they couldn’t identify, or about selling substances they had manufactured on their own. He said he wasn’t shocked by the resulting outcome.
    “You can only blame the people who take it,” he said during a phone interview last week. “When you’re taking something that someone made in their bathroom at home, what do you think is going to happen?” ......................>>>>....................>>>>.....................http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....r00102&AppName=1