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A drug listed on Web as Snurf should have been labeled Barf

Council Rock School District Superintendent Mark J. Klein said his staff usually has ears to the ground when it comes to staying on top of dangerous teen trends.

School buses leave Council Rock High School, where yesterday four students were taken to the hospital for reactions to Snurf, a hallucinogen widely available on the Internet.
School buses leave Council Rock High School, where yesterday four students were taken to the hospital for reactions to Snurf, a hallucinogen widely available on the Internet.Read moreJIM MacMILLAN / Daily News

Council Rock School District Superintendent Mark J. Klein said his staff usually has ears to the ground when it comes to staying on top of dangerous teen trends.

But yesterday, the district was stumped when four sophomore boys at Council Rock High School North in Newtown, Bucks County, became ill after ingesting pills known as Snurf.

According to a release from the district - which cited the pills' packaging as the source of the information - Snurf is an "herbal supplement with mood-altering properties."

On several blogs, Snurf users liken it to the drug Ecstasy.

"We did the Google and found out more than we needed to know about it," Klein said.

According to the online Urban Dictionary, Snurf is a pill available on the Internet through herbal dealers. It is often advertised as an herbal supplement, but generally consists of pure dextromethorphan, or DXM, a drug found in many cough syrups that can act as a hallucinogen if taken in large doses.

Klein said the 10th-grade boys took the pills in a school bathroom during lunch and started to feel the symptoms "almost immediately."

"To the best of my knowledge they were simply sick, sick to the stomach," he said. "They were not in an altered-state-of-mind kind of situation."

School administrators identified the four students who took the pills when one of them reported to the school nurse.

Klein said that the boy in possession of the pills handed them over without incident.

Although only three of the four boys showed signs of illness, all four were taken for treatment to St. Mary Medical Center in Langhorne, where they were met by their parents.

Newtown Township Business Manager Jean Tanner said police would analyze the pills to determine if they contain any illegal substances.

Klein said that the pills can be purchased over the Internet but that it would be up to police to decide the legality of the pills.

A Drug Enforcement Administration spokeswoman said she had never heard of Snurf and did not think it was a controlled substance.