Mephedrone floods the UK collective conciousness

Mephedrone, MMCat, Miaow, Bubble... Call it what you will, the UK's must-have narcotic accessory this season, for better or worse, is most definitely Mephedrone.

As predicted, the UK press coverage of this new and currently legal high is now in full-swing, with Mephedrone stories in every corner of the media, from music magazines, through hyperbole-prone tabloids, to the more respectable newspapers.

Adding his 2-cents to the press free-for-all is Professor David Nutt, the renegade former government drugs advisor who was sacked for making some fairly innocuous statements comparing the relative danger of consuming ecstasy versus riding horses (statistically, equine encounters are far more likely to cause injury or death, though tend to make for less embarrasing Facebook photographs).

Writing in the Guardian, Professor Nutt calls for a 4th classification - Class D - for substances which are known to be being abused but have not undergone sufficient research to be properly classified, such as mephedrone. Substances in this cateogry, Nutt Argues, should be made available to adults under controlled conditions, with suppliers regulated and warnings coming with the product to let users know they are consuming an untested and potentially dangerous drug.

The article cites the arrest of 7 students in Lancaster, allegedly picked up in a club with a drug which they claim was Mephedrone. In such cases, suspects are arrested and released on police bail while the suspicious substances they were caught with are tested. It is unclear how classifying Mephedrone as a Class D substance would change this; Police are more or less duty-bound to arrest anyone they encounter carrying a bag of white powder, since it may well be a controlled substance such as the Class-A cocaine. Seizures sent to the lab for analysis will typically be away for weeks, during which time the arrested person remains a suspect. On-the-spot tests do exist for some drugs but they typically only indicate the presence of a specific substance. Just because mepehedrone doesn't show up positive on an on-the-spot cocaine test doesn't mean it isn't ketamine, speed, heroin, or any number of other controlled substances. As such, the police are pretty much obligated to arrest in situations where a white powder is discovered in suspicious circumstances.

A point made in this article in the Metro - and in much of the more thoughtful press coverage of mephedrone - concerns why users feel willing to turn to a relatively untested compound to get high. 'The Recession' and consistently falling cocaine purity, are singled out as the two biggest factors. The article find some suitably middle-class mephedrone users and cites David, a graphic designer:

'David pays £45 for five grams; in comparison, cocaine costs an average of £50 per gram.'

Paul, an osteopath, elaborates:

‘The problem is that people are sick and tired of spending high amounts on rubbish drugs ... You don’t even know what’s in them'

Paul then goes a bit off-track by suggesting:

'At least with meow [mephedrone] you know what you’re getting and it also gives you the impression you’re not funding the wrong people; some sites are run by people who are genuinely selling it for plants.’

This is wrong on both counts; whilst many (and to NarcoTrends' current knowledge, most) online suppliers of Mephedrone seem to be supplying a pure product, there is absolutely no regulation of the purity of mephedrone bought online or anywhere else. This, of course, is much like the illegal drug market.

In addition, Narcotrends has yet to find a single online mephedrone supplier that seems to be genuinely retailing/wholesaling fertilizer to the horticultural sector, though we could cite many examples of so-called 'plant-food' sites which retail a single product - mephedrone - in quantities too small to be of much use to all but the most amateur of gardeners.

Of course, we are happy to be corrected on such assumptions. If there are any mephedrone suppliers out there selling to the agricultural/horticultural sector, we'd love to hear from you.