Former Cornell student Jane Doe, who filed a civil lawsuit in September 2026 alleging that seven fraternity members raped her at a party, said the young men who assaulted her pressured her into taking the drug ketamine. As an emergency room physician, medical toxicologist and the head of student health services at the University of Virginia, I have had a front-row seat to the growing danger that psychoactive substances such as ketamine present to the health and safety of university students. Ketamine and its emerging spin-off versions are part of a wave of new and evolving designer drugs entering the United States and other countries.
How widely these substances are used remains unknown, since most hospitals are unable to detect them on standard urine drug screens. But ketamine and other drugs are being increasingly reported as agents used in sexual assault – either when people take these drugs voluntarily, are pressured to take them or are given them covertly. The increasing prevalence of ketamine and other drugs—and their use in sexual assault—is playing out on college campuses across the U.S. and putting students at risk.
Ketamine is a synthetic chemical that was first synthesized in 1962. Food and Drug Administration approved it as a general anesthetic for people and animals in 1970, and doctors and veterinarians used it for decades to induce anesthesia during surgeries and to relieve pain. People have used ketamine recreationally since the 1970s.
Getting high on it became more popular in the U.S. in the 1980s, when it was called “Special K.” It was frequently found in the club drug scenes and was associated with raves into the 1990s. Today, ketamine is sold on the street under a variety of slang names, such as K, Ket, and Vitamin K. In 2019, the FDA approved a nasal spray version of ketamine, called esketamine, to treat depression that does not respond to other treatments.
That drug’s use is tightly regulated, but clinicians are increasingly prescribing ketamine “off-label” for a variety of psychiatric conditions, including post-traumatic stress disorder. Cases of poisoning caused by ketamine in the U.S. doubled between 2019 and 2023, according to an analysis of calls to poison control centers nationwide, and are now the highest they’ve ever been. This surge is in part due to the more widespread medical use of ketamine, which makes accessing it much easier.
But street versions of the drug are also prevalent as chemists in basement laboratories create novel ketamine analogs. Ketamine’s effects vary depending on the dose and the person. It can cause someone to dissociate, creating an altered state of consciousness, changing what’s perceived through the senses and causing a sense of detachment from one’s self and one’s surroundings.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
