at DS college - mephedrone deaths

[ThatVikRinA22]

DS just came to tell me his college is on the news.

2 students died from using
this

mixed with alcohol.

its legal, luckily DS knew all about it. he educated me actually. he tells me its a plant fertiliser. seems the lads in question used it in conjunction with alcohol.

my DS is special needs but is switched on enough to tell me what to google. id rather know if my kids were ever contemplating using anything - even a "legal high".

so the calls tonight are for this to be banned. what are your thoughts?

to be honest though, mephredrone isn't a legal high, it's just not illegal yet which makes people lump it in with other legal highs despite the negative efects being much more dramatic than those of legal highs (you know the kind of rubbish you can buy in capsules at festivals).

I'm generally with DuellingFanjo in taking the view that banned drugs should be made legal and carefully controlled, but TBH I think that making mephedrone illegal might be a good idea. I have tried it, but the only reason I would take it again is that it's cheap and legal. If it were made illegal I'd go back to MDMA which is more fun and where the risks are better understood.

I suspect that a lot of other people take mephedrone for similar reasons, and would stop if it were suddenly harder to get hold of. Of course, people who take drugs regularly anyway will just switch to something else (or start stockpiling...)

They still don't actually know what caused the deaths, though, do they?

They had a very sensible chap on the Ch4 news at 7pn yesterday, who pointed out that the toxicology tests hadn't yet been done, so there was no way of knowing whether any of these drugs were implicated anyway.

He also said that it would be far more sensible to legalise everything and sell it under license like alcohol and cigarettes. Absolutely agree.

It is just more ignorant hysteria, stirred up the crap meeja who like spreading frenzy and panic. Look at the Venables case. Just the same.

No facts available so let's make some up.

Wasn't this the legal drug that was being taken regularly by the poster whos DH was walking around the house for house with a sex toy inserted into his backside?

well, there are facts available all over the internet about the effects of Mephedrone and by that I don't mean death I mean all the other horrible things it can do to you. Of course it also makes people feel on a high etc too.

People take risks and they always will do but I think there is something dangerous about a drug like this being viewed as legal or a 'legal high'.

I remember when it first started to get popular and everything I read about it on forums and everything I heard from friends was always punctuated with 'it's not illegal yet so do some before it is because it's amazing and just like ' - i.e people knew it was much more potent than the average legal high, that it was a chemical drug rather than a natural one, that it was a cheaper substitute for many other more expensive and more illegal drugs. PLus they knew that they wouldn't get done by the police for having it so it made it a lot safer in terms of getting into trouble or sourcing it.

I sort of agree with Prof Nutt although there isn't any quality control in banned substances either

i've dealt with a couple of patients who have taken mephadrone and had horrendous symptoms over the following days... one woman in particular had looked after her small children for three days after taking it, blind in one eye and almost unable to stand. she was so worried about the consequences of admitting what she had done to hospital staff that she didn't get help.

another guy was having altered vision, was hearing voices and couldn't stop shaking. that was over 24 hrs after taking it.

it's becoming used more commonly as the weeks go on, we knew almost nothing about it a few months ago.

I just read ( group about mkat on facebook!??!) that this drug is almost chemically the same as crystal meth, can any science types tell me if thats true and also unless I've missed it why no one on the news has mentioned that ( unless its all rubbish obviously )
Am pretty sure that if that's true and it got splashed all over the media surely a lot more people would steer clear of it, even if its seen as a 'safer legal drug' to take??

I remember that bum fella thread. Can't for the life of me remember the drug, but I don't think it was mephadrone.