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This seems like typical sensationalist local or tabloid news coverage. Very little evidence is given here that syringes were involved in assaults. Is it impossible? No. But the vast majority of abusive and dangerous people are gonna use alcohol to assault a woman. And it's more likely to be someone she knows instead of a total stranger.

And WTFis going on with that article anyway?

Before the party, posts on social media had called for women to be targeted during the festivities.

Instead of linking to a news story about those posts, it's a link to an article about a fictional netflix series.

Officials did not say if these were cases of so-called needle spiking with dateremoved drugs such as Rohypnol or GHB, used by attackers to render victims confused or unconscious and vulnerable to sexual assault. There was a spate of such attacks in the U.K. and a number of other European nations about three years ago.

Now this is the amazing part of the article. Police aren't even saying that any of these were drug injections. Then, the article confidently says "there was a spate of such attacks in the UK" and links to an older article. That one is very local newsy, but they at least interview an expert.

Professor Adam Winstock, who runs the Global Drugs Survey, told CBS News that it would be difficult to inject someone with a needle or syringe with enough of a drug to spike them without them noticing.

"Whether or not we've got copycats who are simply going around with a needle and jabbing it into people, whether it's a safety pin or something, I don't know," he said.

"I think we need to put the threat of needle injections in perspective," he added. "The most common way people will attempt to take advantage will be adding things to alcoholic beverages, and the drug most commonly involved will be adding more alcohol."

Winstock said the scale of the problem of spiking in general remains unclear.

"We have no good data on just how common this is, but what we do know is that most women who were taken advantage of while intoxicated with drugs and alcohol did not report it to the police, and they don't report it because of shame, stigma, uncertainty about what happened."