What Is Meow Meow, the Drug That Made a Teen Cut Off His Penis?

Posted: March 6, 2014 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Health and Social Issues, U.S. News | Tags: Bath salts, Breaking Bad, David Nutt, Mephedrone, Recreational drug use, United States, War on Drugs, West Virginia |Leave a comment

The ‘Meow Meow’ drug, also known as Mephedrone.

INVESTIGATING THE MEOW MEOW MENACE

For Rolling Stone, Julianne Escobedo Shepherd reports: Of all the nicknames for a street drug, the newish “meow meow” might be the most innocuous ever, but its effects can be gruesome. On December 29th of last year, a British 19 year old, home for the holidays and geeked on meow meow, stabbed his mother before cutting off his own penis with the same knife.

“…what type of intoxicant could drive a level-headed teen to such a far corner of berzerk?

According to The Mirror, police responded to an emergency call placed by his mother, 46, and discovered the son “hanging out of a bedroom window with blood pouring from his wounds.” As of early January, the mother was in stable condition, and the son’s penis had been reattached. “He is normally a very lovely lad and very bright,” reported a family friend. “But unfortunately, he had started dabbling in drugs.” Yes, very unfortunately.

So what type of intoxicant could drive a level-headed teen to such a far corner of berzerk? Meow meow’s scientific name is “mephedrone,” and the drug is a type of designer amphetamine that produces effects similar to those of both MDMA and cocaine, including everyone’s favorite drug byproduct, teeth grinding.

Meow meow’s proliferation began around 2007, when it started popping up for sale on the Internet; like other designer drugs such as synthetic weed, it was created as a means of sidestepping pre-existing bans on Schedule 1 drugs like its aforementioned analogues.

Cheap to synthesize and easy to get online, the DEA first identified mephedrone as a problem in 2011, approximately two years after it entered the United States, identifying it — and here’s where the penis-chopping comes in — as bath salts. (Bath salts are generally defined as synthetic cathinones, which include, but are not limited to, mephedrone, as the latter is a synthesis of cathinones and amphetemines. Party!) In November 2011, mephedrone was categorized as a Schedule 1 drug in the United States, “part of a large-scale crackdown on substances being sold on the Internet and at places like smoke shops, head shops, convenience stores, adult book stores and gas stations,” according to the DEA as well as those being marketed as plant food, research chemicals or bath salts. The rescheduling came one month after a Kentucky father and his two sons were handed down federal prison sentences for distributing 17 kilos of mephedrone across Eastern Kentucky, West Virginia and the Internet under the name “Ivory Bath Salts.”

Mephedrone has so far mostly thrived in Europe, particularly at British raves, though it was banned in the U.K. in 2010. The popular dance magazine Mixmagpublished a reader survey in 2009 identifying meow meow as the fourth most popular drug (after weed, molly and cocaine), and in 2010, another survey from the publication reported that 75 percent of its readers had used the drug since the ban….Read the rest >>>

Rolling Stone