1 teen dead after mass overdose in Blaine

The Anoka County Sheriff's office says a 19-year-old man is dead and 10 people remain hospitalized as a result of drug overdoses at a party in Blaine early Thursday morning.

Commander Paul Sommer with the Anoka County Sheriff's office said the synthetic drug, called 2C-E, was purchased over the Internet.

"It's a derivative of compounds that's supposed to mimic a hallucinogenic drug, like an ecstacy tablet," Sommer said. "They ingested too much. Some of them were having difficulty breathing, passing and one of them has, in fact, died as a result of his overdose."

Two people are in critical condition, but are expected to survive. Two juveniles and nine young adults were at the party, which is being investigated.

Carol Falkowski, drug abuse strategy officer for the Department of Human Services, said the drug called 2C-E mimics the drug Ecstasy and has no medical use

"The danger in purchasing anything online to ingest in your body is you really do not know what you're getting," Falkowski said. "In the case of these substances, you aren't even certain if it's the substance the website may say it is, and if it is that substance, you have no idea of the purity or potency of it, and so there's no predicting what the effects could be."