Why are there so many research chemicals being used and sold in the UK?

[Solipsis]

It does seem like there are a LOT of vendors of research chemicals based in the UK and a lot of use, abuse and accidents being reported from there. Also UK legislation is apparently a major motivator for the popularization of certain 'analogues' like the allyls (5-MeO-DALT, AL-LAD, allylescaline, MAL - well admittedly those latter two are minor ones), they seem to be the first place where certain chems pop up... it's almost like there is an RC syndicate located there.

I don't mean to make organised crime an explicit topic of discussion here but generally does anyone have any idea why all of that ^^ is ??

 

[Chatative]

For various reasons I think.

In terms of the number of vendors, it all begins with the explosion of the RC market with Mephedrone. Even before all the new RC vendors appeared online, Mephedrone was appearing around clubs & it took off from there. As it gained popularity more & more people jumped on the RC bangwagon. I think probably because of the fact it was legal & the profit margin. I mean the mark up off even small bulk quantities was like 400%. I knew of two people who started dealing locally just for that reason never mind online. The media hype surrounding it all only compounded matters, probably bringing it to attention of even more people whether they were using or selling it.

The fact that Mephedrone gained so much popularity amongst people who had never taken RCs before & even amongst people who had never taken drugs before meant there were a lot of people taking drugs that had no idea what they were using or the risks. It's also led to them branching out & trying other potentially more dangerous drugs. (GBL springs to mind) As such, there were a lot more people being hospitalized which the media latched onto as it would sell their papers. There was a lot of poor, uninformed reporting but it brought the RC market to the attention of the wider public.

After Mephedrone got banned, they just kept trying to put out new RC's in the same manner trying to replicate the success of Mephedrone. However, with the UK Government now saavy, anything even remotely successful that came to their attention would get banned including their analgoues, which has made it harder and harder for the online vendors. As such, we are getting many weird, wonderful & quite possible dangerous RCs appearing.

I really wouldn't associate crime with the RC market. It really was just every man & his dog who was selling RCs. That doesn't mean there weren't people also involved in criminal enterprises who branched out but I don't think it starts with them. I've no doubt they have carried on with the likes of Mephedrone though. I would be shocked if the RC vendors who are savvy enough to be finding new RCs would be involved in anything illegal. I mean what's the point; I'm sure they make enough money anyway.

As to why many RCs seem to originate over here, I think you already answered that question. For a long time RCs were flying under the radar legally speaking & I guess it just meant the world was their oyster so to speak. The big difference in comparison with the States, would be it's a lot quicker to ban anything & it's analogues. I might be mistaken but I don't think the UK particularly banned analogues / did blanket bans until Mephedrone. (I'm not sure if analogues is the term for all Cathinone derivatives? I'm not very knowledgeable about drug chemistry)

I might be mistaken with some of that, but that is my impression.

 

[ponch]

Lax laws coupled with being a country of wreckheads.

 

[Si Dread]

I might be mistaken with some of that, but that is my impression.

That was one meaty reply to fairly simply question. Respect.

I think the reply is simpler. For whatever reason, we're huge users of alcohol & cocaine & almost all other drugs compared to the rest of the world. We're not tp, but we're close to it. For some reason, the British are quite a bit more eager, per head of population, to want to get out of their heads regularly. I've read social studies that address this issue & it happens to coincide with another. The British are also major artistic & technological innovators. For the size of our island, we command huge influence in these areas the world over. As I understand it, the reason for both of these statistis is the same. It's the weather.

For one, it's grey & grim & wet alot, through winter, & often, all year. This means we spend alot of time indoors, thinking shit up, whether that be some technological thing, of a concept album. By the same token, we get bored alot, & we get frustrated alot stuck indoors, hence the use of weed & psychedelics, & we live in dense cities where we are often forced into more socialities than we might choose, hence the use of social drugs like coke, ecstacy & booze.

Just a theory.

 

[Sammy G]

That explains the popularity of intoxication in general, but it doesn't really explain the rise of RCs in particular. If anything, it begs the question why the black market has consistently failed to plug the gaps which the RC insustry does at least semi-successfully.

I think Chatative touched on it; mephedrone became remarkably popular during the MDMA drought, and a lot of people realised there was big money to be made from dealing drugs while staying within the law. Once mephedrone was banned, what were the vendors going to do? Retrain as fishmongers, or try and continue to exploit the massive market they'd discovered? In addition to this, customers had discovered that they could buy drugs that actually worked cheaply, legally and (usually) without the risk of adulterated product. Were they going to give this up? Not likely.

So where RCs were once a niche pursuit, the preserve of drug geeks for the most part, suddenly these new vendors had to diversify. Some peddled obscure stimulants as 'meph replacements' whereas others bought in 6-APB (which was the next hyped RC after the meph ban) and also some of the more obscure RCs which had remained legal but had previously been relatively unpopular (aMT for example). In turn, former meph-heads decided to broaden their horizons with some of these exotic substances which they previously would've ignored. Over time, 'legal high' stopped meaning useless smoking mixtures purchased from dingy headshops, and the rest is history.

So yeah. Opportunist capitalism and the usual side-effects of prohibition, basically. Same old song.

 

[black53]

Don't some EU vendors have an even bigger selection? Basically all the UK rcs + the stuff that's banned there (2cs, tryptamines, fluorinated amphetamines, benzofurans, mxe, 3-meo-pcp, mdpv and cousins, ...).

 

[MrPorter]

Cheap. Get delivered to you. Variety. Legal.
The law is typically slow to get updated and the daily mail/sun do great advertising for these vendors.

 

[Sammy G]

Don't some EU vendors have an even bigger selection? Basically all the UK rcs + the stuff that's banned there (2cs, tryptamines, fluorinated amphetamines, benzofurans, mxe, 3-meo-pcp, mdpv and cousins, ...).

They do, and in certain European countries the RC scene as a whole is probably just as big as that in the UK, if not bigger. Maybe not places like the Netherlands where decent street drugs are in good supply.

The UK market just seems to be saturated with vendors.

 

[black53]

I wonder if well get a good replacement for the APBs since they are about to be banned in the UK.

 

[Sammy G]

There'll be a replacement sure enough. Whether it's any good is another matter entirely, though I doubt it.

 

[black53]

Yeah, the APBs were excellent, it's going to be hard to top that. But one can hope right :D

 

[Sammy G]

Only ever tried 6-APB once, along with some fine 2C-B. Must say it was a pleasant experience.

Never really bothered with it besides, as I'm not really a gurny drug person these days.

 

[ColtDan]

Excellent post Chatative

and i agree, when dosed right APBS are brilliant. one of the best RCs since meph

 

[THECATINTHEHAT]

What I've always wondered is why the proliferance of chemicals tends to be focused primarily on psychedelics. The biggest money spinners would surely be either a good stimulant or a good opiate/barbiturate based downer. I guess there was the explosion of mephedrone but nothing really since other than ethylphenidate, and nothing in the way of downers other than the few benzos/benzo analogues

Whether it's because the pharmaceutical companies have explored the downer route so heavily already that clandestine chemists are just so far behind them they don't stand a chance in finding anything that hasn't already been found and used if it's useful I don't know, or whether the scope for exploration on the stimulant side of things is just smaller or more difficult to find something useful. Maybe it's because the laws alrready in place inhibit exploration of many of these pathways? But I don't think so.

Call me cynical but if they found a good opiod of somesort they could make far more money than with a psychedelic, or the same with a barbiturate analogue. I guess I would get a better response in Advanced Drug Discussion.

 

[Sammy G]

What I've always wondered is why the proliferance of chemicals tends to be focused primarily on psychedelics. The biggest money spinners would surely be either a good stimulant or a good opiate/barbiturate based downer.

Are there all that many psychedelics compared to the number of stims though?

Obviously there's a bit of a crossover between the two categories of drugs which muddies the waters, but think about some of the nasty stims like naphyrone and the unnamed chemicals in the NRG series. There have been quite a few. I think if there is any bias toward psychedelics it's because historically that's what the RC market has really catered for.

Call me cynical but if they found a good opiod of somesort they could make far more money than with a psychedelic, or the same with a barbiturate analogue. I guess I would get a better response in Advanced Drug Discussion.

I agree that it's baffling. AH-7921 wasn't exactly great, but that was kept pretty quiet. There hasn't been much since.

 

[THECATINTHEHAT]

Don't even know what AH-7921 is..../hits google

I've done my best to stay away from the internet drugs game as I've got older anyway because access to more drugs is never a good thing for me. Got myself addicted to benzos because of the internet toooo many times (but not RC ones).

 

[black53]

There are some good stim RCs, but they are illegal in lots of places. The fluorinated amphetamines for example. Now of course it would be great if there were some good phenmetrazine analogues. There's also MDPV and it's cousins and some rarer stuff. They are developing some new eph analogues (isopropylphenidate for example), mpa analogues (bk-mpa), aminorex analogues, ... maybe some of those will turn out good.

I'd also like to see some barb rcs, but then they are kinda dangerous so, maybe that's the reason for their absence... Or if barb rcs are too much to ask, at least some more benzos.. there's a few nice ones in developement, and some rarer ones are available from Swedish rc vendors.

Opioid rcs... well theres AH-7921 which isn't all that good, o-desmethyltramadol was quite nice for pepole with no tolerance and then there's the fentanyl analogues...

A good ghb kind rc would also be nice.....

Or at least if MDAI gets available again

 

[Sammy G]

I'd also like to see some barb rcs, but then they are kinda dangerous so, maybe that's the reason for their absence... Or if barb rcs are too much to ask, at least some more benzos.. there's a few nice ones in developement, and some rarer ones are available from Swedish rc vendors.

Opioid rcs... well theres AH-7921 which isn't all that good, o-desmethyltramadol was quite nice for pepole with no tolerance and then there's the fentanyl analogues...

None of those opioid analogues have really been sold all that widely compared to the likes of meph though, have they? In fact, the sale of AH-7921 is restricted to certain 'advanced' members of RC websites, whereas the likes of butyrfentanyl are straight-up illegal.

You'd like to see more benzo analogues? Seriously?

I think there are more than enough on the market as it is, and they've already caused huge short-term problems. I dread to think of the effect that they'll have on people long-term. If anything's likely to lead to a blanket ban on RCs, benzos are a likely candidate.

 

[ColtDan]

^ this

 

[Sprout]

Having novel chemicals which are close to the popular illegals drop through your letter box by the trusty post service (ha!), not to mention the lack of worrying about being locked up/being in shitty areas, is very, very tempting.