Paramedics injected McClain with ketamine, and he died less than a week later.Ĭolorado’s health department last year announced an expert panel would review the state’s ketamine waiver program.

Police put him in a chokehold twice and multiple officers pressed their body weight on him. Locally, Colorado advocates also angered by racial injustice took to the streets in the name of McClain, the 23-year-old man who was stopped by Aurora Police officers responding to a 911 call about a suspicious person wearing a ski mask and waving his arms. The panel’s recommendations follow last year’s nationwide protests for police reform and racial justice reckoning prompted by the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Lesley Brooks, a family and addiction medicine physician on the panel. “It has subjective and non-medical criteria such as hyper-aggression, increased strength and police noncompliance - all of which are very subjective and inherently biased,” said Dr. The report done by an expert medical panel found that determining if a person is experiencing excited delirium is open to interpretation and has been “associated with racial bias against African American men.” But the use of the drug by paramedics drew renewed scrutiny after the death of Elijah McClain, who was diagnosed with excited delirium and injected with ketamine after being stopped by police in August 2019. Officially, ketamine is used in emergencies when there’s a safety concern for medical staff or the patient. The drug is used as a sedative and is supposed to be fast-acting with limited side affects. Most states and agencies allow ketamine to be administered when people exhibit “excited delirium,” or agitation typically associated with chronic drug abuse, mental illness or both. The announcement came two years after the fatal arrest of a Black man in suburban Denver who had been injected with the drug. DENVER (AP) - Colorado’s health department announced Wednesday that emergency workers should not use a condition involving erratic behavior by people as a reason to inject them with the drug ketamine.

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