Coke Dealers Celebrate Mephedrone Ban
The usual suspects in the media and politics have finally got their way. They managed to find two kids in England who died from taking Methadone and pass it off unchallenged as mephedrone deaths. It’s a classic take from the classic ‘How To Create a Bogus Drug Scare & Ban A Drug’ Handbook’.
Mephedrone was undoubtedly causing problems among many users. It was cheap and used often enough became nasty. But no one seems to be giving a thought to whether Scotland’s overall drug problems will be made worse or better by a ban. E.g. What measures are in place to deal with those who are currently addicted to mephedrone? Which drugs will mephedrone’s recreational users and addicts switch to in future?
What no politician or journalist has had the courage to say is that it will be the coke dealers who will be celebrating this decision most.
Mephedrone took them by surprise and they were left trying to punt their cut-tae-fuck product at £50-60 a gramme while the internet was legally selling a cheap and uncut alternative at just £5-7 a gramme (cheaper if you bought in bulk).
The big time gangsters didn’t manage to get control of the mephedrone trade. But you can bet your bottom dollar they will be stocking up in bulk over the next few weeks and will have control of the mephedrone trade soon enough (and unlike now it will be cut with any old crap, dangerous or otherwise).
This ban is yet more drug prohibition legislation that keeps the illegal drug dealers happy. There’s no no disputing that the mail order trade in methedrone wasn’t exactly harm reduction. But on the production side mephedrone isn’t soaked in blood, misery and murder the way cocaine is. It seems like the murder and mayhem associated with a
particular drug wasnt even considered when this ban was decided.
Kids won’t stop taking drugs because of the mephedrone ban. The ban will deftly push users (and profits) back into the hands of the criminal underworld – which seems to be the blinkered naive modus operandi of all government drug policy.
We know the end result from years of bitter experience: Scotland still has the worst drugs problems in Europe while joined up thinking on drugs still seems light years away from Westminster’s policy makers.
While the SNP havent exactly covered themselves in glory on this subject our best bet for progress is still a sovereign parliament in Scotland which has full responsibility for all aspects of drugs policy and law making – as these things are still “reserved” by Westminster.
Scottish legislators need the executive power (and courage) to examine ongoing experiments in drug policy/legislation taking place outwith the UK that might actually work. The current situation is bleak and Westminster is still hampering us from at least trying to explore some radical new solutions to Scotland’s continually escalating drug
problems.
Dazed & confused: http://www.scottishlabour.org.uk/labour-deep-concern-at-drug-misuse-figures
Well said Kevin. Making drugs illegal just enriches the gangsters. When a particular “high” isn’t available kids move on to another. It’s the same with Kenny’s misguided alcohol pricing initiative. When kids can’t get cheap alcohol they sniff glue, and if glue isn’t available petrol does the trick. What numpties our legislators are.
But as you say: “While the SNP haven’t exactly covered themselves in glory on this subject our best bet for progress is still a sovereign parliament in Scotland which has full responsibility for all aspects of drugs policy and law making – as these things are still “reserved” by Westminster.”
Methadone…mephedrone…methedrone?
Which is it?
Methedrone and mephedrone are different names for the same currently legal drug. (Also called plant food or meow meow).
The two kids who were held up recently as methedrone/mephedrone deaths died after taking a cocktail of alcohol, mephedrone AND methadone.
Any toxicologist worth there salt will tell you it would have been the highly toxic drug methadone that would have been responsible for those deaths primarily . But why let the facts get in the way of a good story.
Apologies for any confusion.
“Methedrone and mephedrone are different names for the same currently legal drug. (Also called plant food or meow meow).”
That is so not true. Methedrone and Mephedrone don’t even have the same chemical formula.
Thanks for the explanation – I thought it was just typos. I’m very naive about these things.
MMMMM
‘interested in an idea put forward that it’s chinese chemists that are supplying this which is sort of a precursor to ecstacy…..can anyone verify either idea??????
I think you have to entertain the notion of deep connection between those who stand to profit from the drug trade and those who make policy, whether Westminster or Washington. If you simply dismiss this as conspiracy theory mongering you do all of us a dis-service. It is not new news that the governments of the west, (and perhaps farther afield) have had deep, foundation level involvement with the international drug trade for as long as there has been a drug trade. Those looking for supporting media would do well to find a copy of Kevin Booth’s “American Drug War: The Last White Hope”, which details the story of Freeway Ricky Ross and his connection to the CIA.
This problem isn’t going away because our corrupt governments depend on the drug trade to finance their ongoing sick agenda. Westminster wants to take you for everything you’ve got, then dump you in the gutter and watch you die slowly.
Thanks Will, any good refs for this stuff welcome. I think there are incidences where there is ‘deep level’ connection and others where it is intransigence, incompetence or a semi-fascist dismissal of the underclass played against a tabloid ‘junkie’ agenda, whilst an elite class hoovers up coke a la Purcell and cronies.
Would also mention the investigative journalism done by Gary Webb who uncovered a network of connections between the CIA, the Contras and crack cocaine dealers during the 1980s.
In 1996 his ‘Dark Alliance’ series of articles for the San Jose Mercury News shone light – using official documents and personal accounts – on the CIA’s knowledge of crack cocaine being flown into California to raise money for the Nicaraguan Contras.
Webb’s story was the most talked about piece of serious investigative journalism in the US during the 1990s. The US establishment were seriously rattled and fought back using the three biggest newspapers in the US.
Webb commented in 1997: “The government side of the story is coming through the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, the Washington Post. They use the giant corporate press rather than saying anything directly. If you work through friendly reporters on major newspapers, it comes off as the New York Times saying it and not a mouthpiece of the CIA.”
Using their friends and connections in the media the establisment went after Webb. From being an award winning and nationally-known journalist in 1996 Webb was ostracised by the mainstream press.
When he couldnt get a job with another newspaper he took his own life in 2004 leaving suicide notes to his wife and family.
* * *
(As an aside, at the end of 1999 I tried to obtain the UK rights for Webb’s book ‘Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion’ to issue here as a Rebel Inc title. Unfortunately I couldnt convince Canongate Books to publish it, which is something that still rankles a wee bit as I felt at the time it was an important story. Import copies are hard to get hold off but there are still a few copies of the Seven Stories Press edition kicking about if you look around.)
Some further reading related to the CIA’s covert attempts to discredit Gary Webb using the mainstream media. Its an old article by Norman Solomon but a good one and still relevant:
“The Establishment’s Papers Do Damage Control for the CIA”
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1374
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methedrone
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mephedrone
Two different drugs, not just two different names.