Designer Drugs
No one is immune from addiction; it afflicts people of all ages, races, classes, and professions - Patrick J. Kennedy

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One in 10 people around the world gets high off designer drugs
Terrifying headlines about synthetic drugs like "bath salts" or those with names like "flakka" that turn people into "naked, paranoid lunatics" make it sound like you'd have to be a raving lunatic to use a synthetic drug.
But synthetic or designer drug usage — including research chemicals, substances chemically tweaked so they are legal instead of illegal (like flakka), and some varieties of fake marijuana — is way too common to be considered just a raving lunatic sort of thing.
According to the 2014 Global Drugs Survey, approximately 10% of citizens from countries with more than 1,500 survey respondents (including the US, Australia,…
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Designer drugs are specifically made to fit around existing drug laws. These drugs can either be new forms of older illicit drugs or could be completely new chemical formulas that are created to fall outside of the law. The most common designer drugs are created by making a derivative of an existing drug’s chemical structure.
Designer drugs 2015: assessment and management
Recent designer drugs, also known as “legal highs,” include substituted cathinones (e.g., mephedrone, methylone, and methylenedioxypyrovalerone, often referred to as “bath salts”); synthetic cannabinoids (SCs; e.g., Spice); and synthetic hallucinogens (25I-NBOMe, or N-bomb). Compound availability has evolved rapidly to evade legal regulation and detection by routine drug testing.
Designer drugs hit dangerous lows to bring new highs
Illicit drugs are staying one step ahead of law enforcement, and users are paying the price.
Future Synthetic Drugs of Abuse
It seems likely that primitive man wished at times to escape his reality and most probably found some natural drug to facilitate this desire. In fact, abuse of the coca leaf and the opium poppy is thought to have been practiced for at least the last 3400 years (Lathrap 1976; Rosengarten 1969) and the use of peyote may have been known as early as 1000 BC (Schultes 1938; 1940).
Internet Psychonauts Try All the Drugs You Don't Want To
f you're looking for a new hobby and get a kick out of taking newly synthesized designer drugs before anyone else in the world, why not become a psychonaut? Sign up and you'll be able to get high on drugs that aren't even regulated yet. Which sounds kind of dumb and very dangerous, but at least won't land you in jail, because you're doing it in the name of "research."
New Designer Drugs Are In Legal Gray Area
The synthetic drugs are technically not illegal because they don’t fit the roster of compounds that the Department of Drug Enforcement has categorized as illegal. There has been a surge in the prevalence of new synthetic drugs, because some psychonauts are having them manufactured in China and shipped to the United States, “right to your PO Box,” Grigoriadis said.
Our purity is above 99%: the Chinese labs churning out legal highs for the west
Chinese factories are mass producing novel psychoactive substances that mimic banned substances, destined for an eager market in the US and UK.
The Drug Revolution That No One Can Stop
Designing your own narcotics online isn’t just easy—it can be legal too. How do we know? We did it.
The Very Real Dangers of Fake Drugs
What makes some teens more likely to use and abuse designer drugs?
What's Flakka and Is It Real? A Guide to the New Moral-Panic Death Drugs
The increasing legality of marijuana means one thing: Pot is very easy to buy and no longer cool to do. To fill this thrill-void, our country's idiots are turning to insane substances like krokodil, bath salts, jenkum, meow meow and now flakka, transforming into psychotic murder machines in the process. Or so local news would have us believe.
One in 10 people around the world gets high off designer drugs
So what makes these drugs so popular? Perhaps the main reason is that many of them are technically legal. By changing just a couple of molecules that make up a drug, a chemist can create something that's distinct from an illegal drug, making it easier to sell or buy it.

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