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Mephedrone
Mephedrone and other substituted cathinones were banned in the UK in 2010 to little avail. Last year 73 new drugs were found on 690 websites. Photograph: Rex Features
Mephedrone and other substituted cathinones were banned in the UK in 2010 to little avail. Last year 73 new drugs were found on 690 websites. Photograph: Rex Features

From Chinese factory to UK households – realities of the trade in legal highs

This article is more than 10 years old
Attempts to control synthetic drug trade resemble futile efforts made by record labels to control digital piracy decade ago

The factory was on an industrial estate near the airport in Shanghai, surrounded by plants churning out legitimate chemicals for the agricultural, perfumery and pharmaceutical trades. This one also made synthetic recreational drugs on an industrial scale.

The scene was grim: filthy chemical reaction vessels, dirty-coated workers scurrying about with solvents. Like the protagonist in the film Scarface, the owner sat surrounded by shipping barrels and kilo parcels of drugs ready for export. However, his product is legal.

I'd been chatting with the owner, one of China's biggest mephedrone vendors, for a few months, setting up a deal – or more accurately, an exposé. I wanted to see inside this factory where tonnes of new, legal drugs had already been manufactured and couriered to the UK and EU.

This is the reality of part of the new drugs scene – chemistry firms in many Chinese provinces are churning out modified versions of illegal drugs and selling them online.

Everything from amphetamine-like stimulants to ecstasy-like substances as well as thousands of synthetic cannabinoids is available. The drugs – which have no history of human use – skirt the law by subtle molecular manipulation. Safety isn't a priority – profit is.

There are hundreds of small labs in China, and many of them are manufacturing thousands of chemicals that users and dealers in the west have identified from scientific research papers as having some potential as unscheduled recreational drugs.

But it's not an exclusively Chinese problem; since mephedrone was banned in 2010 following diplomatic pressure and a domestic problem with the drug, the problem was squeezed out of China, only to emerge in India, where many factories are today pumping out tonnes of the drug every year, supplying a hungry – but now illegal – market in the UK.

Eastern Europe, too, has a crumbling, post-Soviet chemical industry that props itself up with backroom syntheses by graduate students, the web now globalising criminality and delivering not only drugs, but an almighty headache to drug agencies worldwide.

Attempts to control this trade today resemble the futile efforts made by record labels to control digital piracy a decade ago. Then, the music industry was powerless as the web helped people defy the law in ways label bosses could not control. Their impotence was compounded by ignorance and a refusal to innovate.

Historically, four or five new drugs appeared in Europe each year. In 2011 that grew to one a week. Last year 73 new drugs were found on 690 websites.

The tipping point has passed: it was in 2009-2010. The UK and the EU witnessed the "plant food" craze when mephedrone was imported from China and sold online legally, while the US was equally surprised by a sudden upswing in the sales of "bath salts" – a catch-all term for synthetic cathinones, stimulants seldom seen on international markets. The substituted cathinones were banned in the UK in 2010; to little avail: the genie was out of the test tube, and the world was wired.

The American Association of Poison Control Centres said the number of calls related to "bath salt" exposure increased twentyfold in 2011, up from 304 in 2010 to 6,138. Many were sold in packets carrying names like Charlie Sheen, sold as neo-legal cocaine substitutes. They, and a wave of synthetic cannabinoids were even sold in gas stations and skater stores.

It was as if a nationwide drug legalisation policy had been written by a teenager, a gangster, a redneck trucker and a Chinese chemist.

So in the US in December 2011, the Synthetic Drug Control Act outlawed hundreds of new hallucinogens, stimulants and cannabinoids. Dozens of synthetic cannabinoids were also banned in 2011, but a two-minute search will today find dozens of replacements.

It is unlikely, though, that much internet search traffic will be emerging from those states in the US where recreational marijuana use has been decriminalised.

Drugs 2.0: The Web Revolution That's Changing How The World Gets High, by Mike Power is published by Portobello Books (£14.99)

More on this story

More on this story

  • Why the war on drugs has been made redundant

  • At last, the edifice of drugs prohibition is starting to crumble

  • Rise in legal highs is fuelled by drug prohibition

  • The hidden dangers of legal highs

  • Online highs are old as the net: the first e-commerce was a drugs deal

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