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Pow ! to Meow Meow ?
Mephedrone or ‘Meow Meow’ as the media labelled it, was banned in Britain in April 2010- lets look at the effects this had on use, quality and price.
According to last year’s Mixmag survey, 75% of people said they had taken mephedrone since the ban (April 15th 2010) with a third of them saying the ban had no effect. A mere 10% had said use had increased while others were using Cocaine and Ecstasy instead. Read more
Anything is possible on the Silk Road- by Monica Barratt
Much of the research and discussion about drugs and the internet has focused upon either buying drugs online or seeking drug-related information online. News coverage has particularly focused upon the capacity to buy drugs from web vendors (eg, Psychedelic drugs just a click away online, Deadly drug on the net).Yet, evidence from the last decade indicates that most drug transactions still occur in the traditional way.
Popular illegal drugs are not generally available online: unless the product can be marketed as ‘legal’ or ‘not for human consumption’, the legal risk and practical problems associated with selling heroin, MDMA, amphetamines, and cannabis through an online marketplace are just too big, for both buyers and sellers.
Yet, evidence from the last decade indicates that most drug transactions still occur in the traditional way.
MDMA Quality – Up or Down ?
Last years Mixmag’s result’s indicated that the perceived quality of MDMA has gone down. According to the infographic below the quality of pills and powder has improved.
According to Dr. John Ramsey, a UK toxicologist “MDMA is back in tablets. Analysis of drugs seized from this year’s music festivals has shown that “ecstasy” tablets are now much more likely to contain MDMA than the strange mixtures of piperazines (BZP, TFMPP, CPP) that have been common for the past couple of years. A sample of about twenty tablets of various designs were analysed and contained 52 – 115mg MDMA (as free base) with the majority around 100mg per tablet.
Quite pure crystal MDMA is still commonplace but for the first time we encountered sucrose (sugar) crystals in wraps in amnesty bins presumably to be passed off as MDMA. They are very convincing and require analysis to differentiate the two”.
