Party Vibe

@zuggsy 982563 wrote:

Girl’s death after taking ‘MasterCard’ ecstasy prompts police warning | UK news | The Guardian

This article misquotes the actual findings from the 3 fatal ODs that occured in Suffolk and leaves out some important differences about drugs culture in this region compared to a big city like Manchester or London (I have lived in Ipswich, Suffolk for just over 10 years)

The two young men of East European ancestry were killed by PMMA – they were good friends of the dealer (also from the East European community) who handed himself in to the Police shortly afterwards and also told detectives were the rest of the pills were stashed so they could be removed from circulation.

His remorse was mentioned in Court; I am not sure if it had much of a bearing on his sentence which was at the higher end of the scale for class A dealing with no previous.

The lad of English ancestry took ill after an accidental overdose of particularly good quality MDMA (from a different source) combined with other party drugs drugs. This occured in an affluent suburb/semi rural part of Suffolk 15km from Ipswich (the main county town).

One big difference between Ipswich and similar sized towns/cities such as Brighton is that for various reasons the music/arts/night time countercultures do not play as much of a rôle in younger peoples lives as before; there are rarely any EDM events in local venues and what does get licensed is mostly for “middle aged hipsters” who go to bed just after midnight even on weekends (alas, many folk younger than me now fit into thie category). It is rare to encounter drugs at these events; which IMO is forcing those who do still wish to partake further underground and away from places they might find good advice/harm reduction.

I had to explain to metpol in the 1990s that amfetamine powder was class B and not A (as I had been bailed whilst they tried to find this out) – it still took a while to convince them even after bringing in written proof (from a book written by the senior Drugs Squad Commander at Scotland Yard)- one of the cops did finally realise the name on the article was familiar…

Cops in the South went through a stage of treating every kind of chemical drugs as class A but only giving out cautions or warnings – I suspect this was due to some kind of crime figures monitoring exercise where it looked better for them as those reading the figures would think there was lots of action against class A users.

@tryptameanie 982625 wrote:

Bizarrely, amphetamine, the actual chemical compound is class B. That exact same chemical compound “prepared for injection” is class A.

Why that would be allowed of deemed sensible IDK but it’s like saying only snorted amphetamine is class B and oral ingested amphetamine is therefore class C.

Total fucking nonsense.

although its mentioned on some current harm reduction sites (though not on the govt website!) it is unclear if this is still even enforced (proving it in Court would also require the officers to deal with such unpleasantness as half filled syringes) and there are way more class A drugs being consumed than 20 years ago….

@tryptameanie 982626 wrote:

I never put on the for it was MDMA, said it was sold as DXM. They have written that steroids and other performance, image enhancing compounds would not be tested. NOWHERE dpo they at all distinguish between anything else and even looking at the reults you’ll see the classic illegals mixed with rare illegals and plenty of total crap.

Makes no sense to me at all.

at least the Dutch test results do appear to be dealt with in some logical order although the test centres officially only publish a list of the 5 most risky pills (either PMMA or high dose MDMA) as a black and white document in Dutch only and discourage sharing of results that can be traced to individual labs online -as this can apparently be used by political opponents to get the labs closed down. (although a fair few of the pillreports.com postings from NL do seem to have been carried out via the test labs).

the Dutch do have the same sort of system (which also tests NPS) and even better equipment and procedures than WEDINOS.The whole lot appears to be overseen by Trimbos who have been around for decades although in recent times I’ve noticed their views have shifted more towards “prevention/demand reduction”. I am not sure how much autonomy they have from local and national politicians; so the Europe wide shift to the right may well also affect them.

from what I have read so far these work slightly differently from WEDINOS; test centres are in various locations across the country; they only collect samples for an hour or so every Wednesday or Thursday afternoon around 16:00/17:00 (conveniently selected so younger people are likely to get one afternoon off from University or can arrange to leave early from work).

Only 3 samples of the drug are allowed for testing; the person bringing them in gets personally given the code number and either reattends the test centre or is sent the results by secure electronic maill; with a warning not to share the exact location of the test lab online (they can of course still say roughly where in NL the drugs were from).

Bear in mind they have just had to attend the test place in person which may be in some part govt owned building; and NL had CCTV in town 40 years ago. that said i’ve never heard of anyone get followed/in trouble for using these services. Though the whole setup does seem a bit like attending Confession which might not be a complete coincidence :laugh_at: