Tale of Designer Drugs
In his terrific book on the world of narcotics titled Narconomics , Tom Wainright has a chapter on “designer drugs”. So what are designer drugs? “(Designer drugs are) synthetic drugs (that) mimic the effects of more mainstream narcotics.” In other words, they are “concocted in laboratories rather than on Andean hillsides or in Afghan poppy fields”. Also, they are legal (more on that later), which is why they’re also called “legal highs”. While “legal” sounds like “safer”, they are actually riskier than good old cocaine and heroin (more on why later). It all began in New Zealand! Since New Zealand is in the middle of nowhere (“where Hobbits frolic”) and has a tiny population, it just wasn’t economical for drug cartels to smuggle their drugs to the Kiwis. But of course, the Kiwis being human, needed drugs like the rest of us… which led to the creation of designer drugs. And then they began to spread to other parts of the world. But why are they legal? Aha, it’s a cat-and-...