Mephedrone and Media Manipulation

Mephedrone is a legal drug available to buy freely on the internet (except Sweden and Israel). You can read about it HERE

In the UK, 'legal highs' are becoming more and more popular as recreational drug users turn away from over-priced and low-quality illegal substances and head towards cheaper, high-quality alternatives. However, a lack of official studies on these legal alternatives and also a lack of recommended dosage information raises questions about how safe these legal alternatives are.

Being legal doesn't necessarily make them safer.

This month a bill will reach UK parliament which looks to ban certain substances which are currently legal in the UK. This will include BZP (herbal ecstacy), GBL (i'm sorry, but if you're gonna drink paint stripper than you deserve to die!) and the synthetic cannaboid found in the legal smoke Spice.

Mephedrone, and other methylcathinones such as Methylone, have so far escaped all media attention or mention in the upcoming bill until this week when this story suddenly cropped up:

Girl, 14, who died at house party may have taken drug sold on internet for £4 a gram


Now, for starters, if anyone can find this anywhere for £4 a gram, please let me know immediately The actual going rate is £15 a gram.

Point 2 is that the girl was also taking Ketamine, which can cause heart attacks. She died of a heart attack but obviously it must've been this new thing no one's heard of rather than that other thing that causes heart attacks!

The Metro goes one step further with this headline on the front page:

Girl, 14, killed by legal web drug meow meow

I've written to the Metro to ask them how they got a hold of the toxicology report before it has even been done, but i'm yet to get a response.

Then we've got this lovely headline:

Police warn over mephedrone dangers after user 'ripped off scrotum'

So is this the end of people in the UK getting access to high-quality legal highs? Are they to be forced to pay high prices for low quality goods that only go towards funding criminals and are cut with other dangerous chemicals?

We all know that making drugs illegal doesn't stop people taking them. It just makes them take drugs off the wrong people.

I say don't ban it and do properly test and label it!

Even taking paracetamol can cause death if mis-used. I don't see them banning that. I do see them putting plenty of warnings on the packaging.

I'll be watching the upcoming bill closely to see how this pans out.

they'll ban it, somebody will add a carbon atom to one end or the other, they'll ban that, somebody will add a hydrogen atom, they'll ban that......

i duuno, i think it's getting a bit silly and pointless, i really hope the government give it up as a bad job.

reply to post by pieman


Yup. Exactly. Someone is always a step ahead, adding things here and there to create something new that gets around the law.

There's no point in the government wasting their time and energy, not to mention the £ spent on policing, to make these chemicals illegal.

Man, you can get high from drinking cough medicine. But they don't ban it, they just properly label it.

i don't see this chemical as being any different.

reply to post by Nammu


well, in all fairness, we have a fair idea what the actions and risks associated with codeine (i assume that's what's in your cough medicine) but mephadrone is an unknown entity.

it doesn't feel toxic but, IMHO, all we really know is that it's as addictive as satan and, often, the level of toxicity and addiction go hand in hand. then, that's just an opinion/observation.

i'm all for liberalism but i think we, the advocates of liberalism, should be bluntly honest and realistic. you can't treat this like cough medicine because you haven't got a clue what this does.

it should remain "unfit for human consumption", because it really is. to me, it's the same situation as the one you outline for GBL i think that's the attitude the government should have, "you might die if you take this stuff, but go ahead".

Originally posted by Nammu
In the UK, 'legal highs' are becoming more and more popular as recreational drug users turn away from over-priced and low-quality illegal substances and head towards cheaper, high-quality alternatives.

Discussion of recreational use is not allowed in the new forum.

Thread closed.