Sydney Morning Herald (14th April)
 
     "Let's make it a brandy, slime and soda" - Greg Roberts
 
 
     BRISBANE: Everyone knows about heroin and cocaine, 
 LSD and marijuana, tabacco and alcohol, even coffee and tea.
     Now there is toad slime, the cheapest and perhaps the
 nastiest drug of the lot.
     Inspector Syd Churchill of Cairns Police says people
 experience "vivid colours and a burning feeling all over
 their bodies" after drinking the toad slime.
     Inspector Churchill said the preparation involved boiling
 the toads in a billy for a few minutes.
     The toad are then removed and the "somewhat treacly substance"
 left behind is drunk. The practice began in North Queensland,
 where cane toads are plentiful, and it is spreading.
     "The people involved usually live in remote rainforest areas
 like Cedar Bay, where access to normal drugs is difficult" Inpector
 Churchill said.
     "People taking it experince a trip similar to that 
 resulting from LSD. It is by, all accounts, a very potent drug.
     The inspector warned that bufotenine, the substance contained
 in two glands behind the toad's head, is an illegal substance
 under Queensland's Drugs Misuse Act.
     "I don't know how it came to be listed alongside cannabis
 and the rest" he said.
     "I  guess when you're living a long way from civilization,
 you think of the best available alternative."
     "I would think the incidence of use is quite small. I mean,
 just to look at a cane toad is enough to put you off the thing."
     "I guess a lot of people would look at it and think: 'Well
 I'll give that a miss'. Some people prefer to use them as golf
 balls."
     Dr. Robert Endean, associate professor of zoology at
 the University of Queensland, and an expert in toxicology, confirmed
 that the toads were used as a source of drugs.
     His attention was first brought to the phenomenon by police
 ten years ago.
     "In those days, people were skinning the toads and
 then chewing the skins," he said.
     Dr Endeann said toad skins contained 15 different chemical
 coompounds, some of which were definitely hallucinogenic. "With
 a toad skin, you've got a real cocktail."
     But he warned that cane toad secretions can be fatal.
     "Some of the compounds can cause very powerful responses,
 particulalry with the heart. People could kill themselves easily."