GHB: 'a terrible drug'

Back before the hype hit, I did some research and everything I could find all agreed that GHB sodium salt had almost no respiratory depressant effect. There are really only two problems: one, it does have a synergistic effect with alcohol, and alcohol of course is highly dangerous; and two, once the authorities stuck their big unhelpful noses into the matter, it became harder to get GHB sodium salt, so people frequently substitute either 1,4-butanediol or raw GBL (possibly contaminated with other organics), and either of those is likely to have a considerably worse respiratory depression effect.

So this is yet another example of the problem with the currently popular "harm-exacerbation" model of drug policy management...

If anyone can point me to a well-documented case of someone overdosing on GHB sodium alone I would be mightily impressed. Unfortunately ER admissions for drug issues are almost never given a toxicology screen, so they essentially know absolutely nothing about what people were really on. So the statistics are practically meaningless.

Problem is that the difference between "mmmifeelgrrreatthisisreallynice.."and
OMFG he/she's FUKKEN DEAD!!! is quite hard to discern in high GHB states .

i wish we could get that ambulance subscription service here