But we have no evidence of any similar misuse of the drug in London."The woman said she was bought a drink by a man with a Scottish accent. She told police the last thing she remembered before waking up at home was that she felt faint half an hour after taking the drink.Mr Macauley said: "It would [be] very hard to prove any case of the drug being used. It goes through the system extremely quickly so by the time any toxicology tests could be done it's unlikely there would be any traces in the bloodstream."Scotland Against Drugs, a part-government, part-private industry-funded organisation, is seeking to raise awareness among young people of the dangers presented by Rohypnol and another commonly abused anaesthetic, Kitamine, which was identified as a "date-rape" pill in the US in 1979.Women looking to buy ecstasy in Scottish night-clubs and pubs have been deliberately sold Kitamine instead, said Dr Macauley.Rohypnol is available on prescription in 64 countries but is banned in the United States where it has gained widespread notoriety as a the "date-rape pill".So well-known are its properties that it featured in an episode of the hit hospital series ER, screened in the UK last week, in which a nurse was raped after she was given the drug unwittingly.Florida has been the centre of the US battle over the drug, where a "roofie", as a tablet of Rohypnol is called, costs as little as $1.50. When she wakes up she knows little or nothing about it."Last week, a report by a woman that her drink was spiked with an unknown substance in Soho, central London, prompted Scotland Yard to issue a warning to women to beware of the possibility that strangers may try to spike their drinks.A spokeswoman for the Metropolitan Police said: "We are aware of reports of Rohypnol's use in the United States. Rohypnol is here," said David Macauley of the Glasgow-based campaign group Scotland Against Drugs."If you had to compose the requirements for a date-rape drug then Rohypnol is as close as you can get," he said."It can work within 20 minutes... The drug, Rohypnol, is available on private prescription in the UK for back pain and insomnia and is also used as a pre-surgery anaesthetic.

It is 10 times more powerful than Valium. But if the drug is taken unsupervised, particularly in combination with social drugs or alcohol, it has the more sinister effect of making the victim vulnerable to rape."I have had reports of it being misused in this country and used as a date-rape drug There have been police seizures of it in Scotland. "But I cannot see how it is in the public interest for footage like this to be seen.". "It would obviously need to be balanced by a public interest defence," he says. "In any case, I felt reassured that having asked the cameraman who he was and realised they were a commercial rather than a police crew, the police had told me the film wouldn't be used."She was also concerned that the man who mugged her, who had her address from her handbag, might see the footage and return.