Hm.. sounds interesting. I wonder why more of this stuff aint going around. Must not be very easy to make or get?
Remember "bath salts" and "flakka"? Those were actually cathinones, and they were pretty popular for a time, even in America.
The thing is that the most potent ones (like MDPV and a-PVP) have since been banned in most of the world, including China - and since that is where most of these were synthesized, their supply has decreased dramatically. While they are not necessarily
hard to make, they're still significantly harder to make than meth... and if those cathinones are just as illegal as meth, why bother, especially if meth has superior "brand recognition" among your customers?
Mephedrone and a-PVP are supposedly still being produced clandestinely in Eastern Europe, but they can no longer be openly sold on the net, so very little makes it to the street in the West.
As for the original unsubstituted cathinone found in
Catha edulis, it is fairly unstable chemically, so the plant has to be consumed fresh. Apparently some members of the Somali community will smuggle it into the West, but this is mostly done for cultural reasons (as communal khat-chewing is a popular social activity for men in Eastern Africa and Yemen), not because it offers any sort of decent "bang for your buck".
There is also methcathinone, a chemically stable synthetic derivative which is significantly more potent than cathinone itself. Like methamphetamine, it can be synthesized from pseudoephedrine; however, depending on the oxidant used, batches of methcathinone are often contaminated with toxic amounts of manganese. It is also less potent than methamphetamine which - coupled with the substance being just as illegal - didn't help its popularity.
