Grindr bans man who set up account to help people with chemsex and drug abuse issues
Grindr. (Getty)
A man who set up a Grindr account to help people experiencing issues with drug abuse had his account repeatedly shut down by the hook-up app.
Chemsex substance abuse expert Ignacio Labayen de Inza set up the Grindr account specifically to direct people to relevant advice on drug abuse.
He also compiled his own research on drug dealing on the app – all voluntarily – by talking to both dealers and users and later presented the evidence to Grindr, Buzzfeed News reports.
The chemsex substance abuse expert had his account blocked by Grindr.
While using the app, more than 2,600 gay and bisexual men contacted him asking for advice. While the company initially listened to him, they later told him to report the drug dealing to the relevant authorities himself and later stopped responding altogether.
They then blocked him from using his account and only let him back in after four months of appeals. When they allowed Labayen de Inza back into his Grindr account, he was told that he had been banned due to a breach in “community guidelines”.
Just last month, Channel 4 Dispatches, Buzzfeed News and the Terrence Higgins Trust revealed in a documentary called Sex, Drugs and Murder that more than a quarter of GHB users have been sexually assaulted.
The number of people who die with GHB detected in their system, is around 20 per year.
The drug is commonly used in chemsex and can be fatal when an overdose is taken.
For the documentary, 2,700 gay and bisexual men who take the drug were surveyed, with two thirds saying they had issues such as addiction, overdose and sexual assault.
Almost half of all GHB users had overdosed and passed out when using the drug and most were unaware that snoring is a sign that a person is slipping into a lethal coma.
People in the UK are more likely than other countries to use drugs to enhance sex.
Dr Owen Boden-Jones, founder of the Club Drug Clinic in London, said: “The one thing that’s really distinct though, about GHB, is the small difference between the amount a user takes to get the desired effect and the amount that causes an overdose.
“There are some national statistics and those national statistics show that over the last decade, the number of people who die with GHB detected in their system, is around 20 per year.
“Now; that is probably a very large underestimate and the reason for that is when there’s a death, there’s not always the toxicology done to detect to see if GHB is there.”
Meanwhile, a Global Drug Survey from earlier this year found that people in the UK are more likely to use drugs to enhance sex compared to other countries.
