Flakka
Alpha-PVP, a powerful stimulant nicknamed Flakka, is shown after being seized by Broward County police in this image released on May 28, 2015. Reuters/Broward Sheriff's Office/Handout

A new zombie drug is believed to be the cause behind the overdose of more than a dozen Queenslanders hospitalised over the weekend. The 16 youth all exhibited the same symptom of hallucinating.

Initial reports said there were eight victims who came from parties, seven from Surfers Paradise and one in Labrador as of Saturday night, Yahoo News reports. On Sunday morning, more young people were rushed to hospitals with similar symptom of hallucination. One 24-year-old woman came from the Shooter nightclub on Cavill Avenue.

A second woman on Orchid Avenue showed the same symptom, while another person was reported suffering from seizures and running wildly through traffic outside Melba. Four more cases on Cavill Avenue and one more in Labrador Avenue were reported, according to 9 News.

Police, who were investigating the cases, speculate the drug could be a stimulant made from Alpha-PVP, or flakka. It is a crystalline white or pink substance that looks like gravel which could be swallowed, smoked, snorted, injected or vaporise, producing the same psychoactive effects similar to ecstasy and methamphetamine.

Geoff Munro, national policy manager for the Alcohol and Drug Foundation, a drug advisory group, compares taking the drug to playing the fatal game using a gun called Russian Roulette. By taking the untested drug, people “are taking something that they can’t be sure what it is, they don’t know the dose or the potency and they can’t know how their body will react to it,” Munro points out.

The report of overdose comes just before the start of Schoolies in Queensland on Nov 19.