Party Vibe

that definition of RC is exactly what we use in Europe. I quite often legitimately buy strong chemicals/industrial solvents for use at work (especially cleaning up electronic circuit boards and connectors carrying low level signals for computers and audio kit) – they certainly are not for human consumption as they will make you very ill if you do ingest them and have other safety hazards but can be obtained provided you are over 18 and can reassure the suppliers and the local authorities/Fire Brigade you are not going to do anything silly or unpleasant with them.

it is this existing method of purchasing chemicals that is used by RC suppliers; many of which are semi-covert subsidiaries of companies dealing in the “legit” use of the other laboratory chemicals. TBH although there is some (perhaps justified) paranoia in Europe about political extremists making IEDs or CBRN weapons; it is still perfectly legal to do scientific experiments as a hobby as long as they don’t harm others and thus to purchase the required materials.

@Requiem 601313 wrote:

Yeah and deaths from coke returned back to where they were pre mephedrone.

I don’t even think mephedrone actually killed that many people (no more than a handful) – ODs are unpleasant but rarely directly fatal. Out of two prominent deaths blamed on the substance I remember reading about that both casualties were living risky lifestyles and the use of mephedrone seemed to merely exacerbate existing physical health conditions; turning what would be a minor but treatable illness into a life threatening one.

That can also happen with traditional party drugs – I think what caused the biggest social panic with cathinones was that the symptoms present far quicker than with the other drugs; and the low price and high availabiity of cathinones meant that problems from binge usage showed up far quicker. I always thought the biggest risk from them (for younger people at least) was mental health issues following repeated use leading to self-harm or suicide; but I remember people in the early 1990s going down this way too and TBH felt that this risk was overlooked if anything in comparison to that of immediate fatal OD due to the chems themselves.

the coroners/inquest process is by definition skewed towards merely recording the fact someone has died and trying to fathom out how it happened – its only recently that the concept of trying to use it to try and prevent avoidable deaths has arisen.

it can never provide all the evidence. for instance an RTC victim will have something like “multiple trauma injuries” as main cause of death; protecting others from the same fate involves the traffic cops and highway authorities and TRL (transport Research laboratory) investigating other factors in the design of the roads/vehicles or human psychology that caused the collision to happen. Often similar organisations in Europe and beyond work together investigating this.

with at least two of the “mephedrone related” deaths the causes of death were reported correctly as the serious illnesses the users had suffered; it was the news media who talked up the drugs being a factor as speculation. In the early 90s the coroners would deliberately leave out any mention of drugs as many are also family GPs in the same area and they didn’t want middle class parents who had lost their teenage/young adult kid being judged again by the media. This unfortunately meant that things such as the risk from PMMA pills (which were about in early 90s) went undetected and others died.

for something which isn’t immediately dangerous or fatal like small scale drug use it is obviously more sensible to monitor things when folk are still alive! current RC culture especially in depth discussion of the positive and negative effects on Internet forums is providing the ACMD profs (and their overseas counterparts) with fairly good quality verifiable evidence from real human users; very few people would go to all the trouble to make a fake profile on a drugs forum and spread false info (unless its disputes between vendors; which is discouraged as it attracts clampdowns from feds).

it can be “psychologically” addictive but so can any similar substance. Like MDMA it can lead to “out of character/impulsive behaviour” including infidelity. when Alex Shulgin and his wife carried out experiments using similar substances with subjects who were young couples they would chaperone them so they remained faithful.

If anything cathinones were to some extent “self regulating” as eventually you got this nasty crash (no matter how much you took) where you would suddenly become depressed / irrationally paranoid yet unable to relax/sleep on top of various unpleasant physical symptoms.

Sadly too many people seemed to just ignore the warnings from their own bodies and then ended up running to the health services to try and fix them leading to the stuff being controlled across much of the world.

TBH it seemed to me like a double speed repeat of what happened with MDMA/Ecstasy in the 1990s/2000s (especially around the turn of the century where the cops seemed unable or incapable of enforcing the drugs control laws anywhere in Europe) albeit with slightly less direct fatalities.

There does however seem to be a different cultural attitude to drug use resulting in sudden fatalities as opposed to long term pyschological addictions or even regular use and the changes it causes to the users. I can only speak for what goes on in the SE and Eastern bits of England (although it may be widely repeated across Britain and Europe as a whole)

I won’t call it a “double standard” as this seemingly irrational behaviour could equally be classed as simple compassion and humanity but I’ve noticed that even in non religious communities / organsations there remains this belief that when a young person dies through an uninentional or/ non malicious mistake (as as an overdose, a vehicle collision, a serious accident during playing sports or at work/school or one of the many health conditions that can suddenly finish off young people otherwise in good health the local communities including friends, neigbours, press etc genuinely believe that this is an unfortunate risk of being young and making mistakes and judgment is left to those qualified to do so such as HM Coroner / NHS plus whatever other agencies might be appropriate (AMCD, Health and Safety exec, Transport Research labs etc) and confined to why the incident happened rather than the character of the victim(s).

You do of course get some people saying “drugs / motor vehicles / sports / work practices” should be banned/regulated/restricted and indeed that does happen to some extent or another; which by and large hinges on whether the dangerous practice has wider beneift to society if done more safely. Which of course it can – although Britain isn’t always the best in Europe we do manage not to crash every vehicle on the road; or reduce our factories and chemical plants to ash; and even win some medals at sport.

I’ve noticed that it took ACMD much longer to restrict the more functional stims and that has only happened since folk from the lower socio economic parts of society thought it was a good idea to try and inject one containing so much free sulfur it would be like injecting mild battery acid as another one had been restricted due to people behaving badly after taking it including just chucking the used needles in the street (I don’t inject as a I have a fear of needles; but everyone I knew who did/does was given a sharps bin from the NHS or even the police!)