I bet you this is because people are starting to get addicted to this in China. I don't think China give a shit what happens to other countries. They must be making a lot of money from exporting it. Would you guys agree?
Not entirely. Yes, China will be making money from this, but not huge amounts I wouldn't have thought, especially as the UK was one of the biggest markets for mephedrone, and it's now a Class B drug, which will of course curb use to an extent (even if that's only because people can't go into headshops and pay £30/g for mephedrone).
The international community can and often do apply pressure, and whilst China is a big boy, he does still need the support of his friends to keep him safe (and rich).
I doubt there's a huge mephedrone problem in China, but I could be completely wrong. Somehow I don't think they'd have caught on this quick if it was an issue within their own country.
Besides, we saw it happen not that long ago. MDMA went from being abundant in every town, to being one of the most scarce drugs (real MDMA anyway) in the UK, and the price was (and still is) phenomenal.
2007, real crystalline MDMA was costing ~£100/3.5g, start of 2010 that's ~£100/1.0g. Of course there's much speculation about why the availability went down and price went up, many people crediting a
2008 bust of 33-tonnes of Safrole oil as the cause, but if prohibition has taught us anything it's that a single bust NEVER affects supply, especially not to that extent.
Which opens up the floor for speculation, rumour and myth. The one I heard most often (and chose to believe more likely than the rest) was that there was international pressure placed on China to stop the refining of Safrole oil to MDP2P and then MDMA (something they clearly knew about, and presumably as it was never killing significant numbers of people (unlike Opium back in the day) something they allowed), in exchange for the Beijing 2008 olympics.
