Mephedrone - what do you think?

[TeaFan]

Anyone use this drug?

 

I didn't know about it until today (my clubbing days being long gone), but it sounds as if it might have more serious side effects than ecstasy, which it appears to be a legal substitute for. Some reports say that it's because of a scarcity of good ecstasy (due to a seizure of large amounts of a key ingredient in 2008 ) that people are using mephedrone instead. Is this a case of prohibitionism causing its own problems?

 

Sensible debate and experiences of users welcome.

[Dave650]

Makes people worse than ecstasy in my experience (observations), the reports of deaths are scary too. It seems to be addictive as well, which I don't think ecstasy (usually) is. Hopefully it'll be banned soon, it does put ecstasy and cannabis classifications to shame though!

[Bloomdido]

They had been drinking and had taken mephedrone and methadone. Someone must have given it to them and not taken responsibility for making sure they knew how much to take and that they were in a fit state to take it.

 

It will be banned of course but alcohol won't and that kills nearly 10,000 people every year.

[cgksheff]

Can someone tell the politicians that it isn't/wasn't really plant food?

[Bloomdido]

I have taken plant food with varying effects. Some of it had worse effects than the A list and it was legal.

[Halibut]

They had been drinking and had taken mephedrone and methadone. Someone must have given it to them and not taken responsibility for making sure they knew how much to take and that they were in a fit state to take it.

 

It will be banned of course but alcohol won't and that kills nearly 10,000 people every year.

 

Indeed; in the absence of any serious data you'd have to suspect it was the methadone and booze that killed them rather than the mephedrone.

[icon76]

Let's ban it. The poor drug dealers need at least one more thing to cut with cleaning chemicals and mark up by several thousand percent otherwise how will they afford another 24 carat gold knuckle duster?

[Halibut]

Let's ban it. The poor drug dealers need at least one more thing to cut with cleaning chemicals and mark up by several thousand percent otherwise how will they afford another 24 carat gold knuckle duster?

 

Lets not ban it. There's no clear evidence yet about the health risks.

[icon76]

Lets not ban it. There's no clear evidence yet about the health risks.

 

I thought the above post contained enough clear sarcasm to make all but the village idiot realise i was against banning it.

[Phanerothyme]

Here you see the problem with prohibition - people who want enjoy a drug experience within the law are denied safer substances and have to make do with legal, but untested susbtances with no history of use (and hence no legal status).

 

So, if you want a drug experience, you have a few choices:

 

a)Stay within the law and stick to one of the very small range of state sponsored, heavily taxed and highly addictive & damaging drugs.

 

b) Break the law and use either highly addictive/dangerous drugs or even relatively safe and even beneficient/therapeutic drugs that have been used happily for millennia.

 

c) Stay within the law, and use legal drugs that allegedly mimic or approximate the illegal drugs, and that have no history of human usage, safe or otherwise, drugs for which no safety information or understanding exist.

 

The straight dope so far courtesy of Wikipedia (good refs)

At present, very little is known about the toxicity of 4-methylmethcathinone. In 2009, one case of sympathomimetic toxicity was reported in the UK after a person took 0.2g of mephedrone orally and 3.8g intravenously. They were treated with 1mg of lorazepam and the sympathomimetic features decreased within 6 hours of treatment.[24] Reported side effects suggest it may cause pronounced peripheral vasoconstriction, which has been speculated to result from formation of the potent vasoconstrictor 4-methylephedrine as a metabolite,[3] a compound known to have significantly more cardiovascular toxicity than ephedrine itself.[25] The Swedish medical journal, Läkartidningen reported that mephedrone could theoretically cause the cardiovascular problems associated with the use of cocaine and amphetamines