ketamine

Of the 150,000 death records publicized by the coroner’s office of L.A. county since the year 2001, there have been at least 40 with “ketamine” mentioned.

There was a notable increase in 2022 and 2023.

0 in 2005
1 in 2006
0 in 2007-2009
2 in 2010
0 in 2011-2012
2 in 2013
1 in 2014
0 in 2015-2016
1 in 2017
1 in 2018
4 in 2019
2 in 2020
5 in 2021
10+ in 2022
8+ in 2023

Note that there is a lag of more than a half a year in the reporting of most substance cases because of the backlog at the labs being used by the county currently. We expect to see around 20 ketamine deaths by the end of 2023 at the rate we’re going.

It’s possible that injections of synthetic mRNA have weakened the systems of the victims making them more susceptible to death from ketamine. A number of the tox results show only ketamine in the system, without any other drugs.

It is more likely though that fentanyl contamination is responsible for the increase in ketamine fatalities.

Drug deaths are frequently classified as accidents by the medical examiner because it is assumed that the users didn’t intend to kill themselves. There have been a few cases where the death was ruled a suicide or a homicide.