DESIGNER DRUGS BAFFLE EUROPE

Europe is grappling with a flood of powerful and sometimes lethal new
narcotics that are often legal when they first appear because
authorities have never seen or banned them before.

With catchy nicknames like Meow Meow, Spice and NRG-1, the drugs are
often sold online as "legal highs." They typically come in powder form
and can be snorted, licked or packed into tablets and create highs
that mimic drugs ranging from cocaine to ecstasy, which some narcotics
experts say has become less available amid a world-wide effort to
blunt production. The drugs have been blamed for the deaths of two
young people in the U.K. and Sweden, and authorities say they may have
contributed to as many as 30 deaths in the U.K. in recent years. With
some drugs selling for about €15,000 ($19,000) a kilogram, producers
and dealers stand to profit.

"Some of these compounds have been known for quite some time in
scientific literature but not on the streets," said Simon Brandt,
senior lecturer in analytical chemistry at Liverpool John Moores
University in the U.K. Many of the new compounds are quite pure,
suggesting that the people making them are sophisticated chemists with
modern equipment, he said.

European countries are scrambling to crack down. The U.K., Sweden and
Germany all recently banned one of the most popular drugs, mephedrone,
or Meow Meow, which first appeared in 2007. The U.K. this week
announced a ban on naphyrone, or NRG-1, which surfaced after the
mephedrone ban.

But authorities are having a hard time keeping up with all the new
concoctions. As soon as one is banned, another appears, they say. Last
year, 24 new "psychoactive substances" were identified in Europe,
almost double the number reported in 2008, according to the European
Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, which keeps European
Union policy makers informed on the state of drug use.

European authorities say some of the drugs are cooked up in China,
where they say lax control of chemicals makes it easier for
manufacturers to obtain the raw ingredients.

Yan Jiangying, spokeswoman for China's State Food and Drug
Administration, said China classifies mephedrone and naphyrone as
chemical products, not as narcotics or other drugs. Materials
classified as narcotics are controlled by the SFDA, she said, with
regulations over their export, including approval by the SFDA. It
publishes an annual list of regulated drugs. The agency doesn't have
responsibility for regulating all chemical products, however.

Ms. Yan said the SFDA is aware of reports on the concerns about
substances such as mephedrone and naphyrone. She said the SFDA keeps
in close contact with international narcotics-control authorities and
will continue to cooperate in the fight against drug crimes.

Some of the drugs have appeared in Australia, New Zealand and Taiwan.
In the U.S., a new kind of synthetic cannabinoid similar to marijuana
is increasingly popular, and some states have banned it. But a
spokesman for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration said the U.S.
hasn't seen the same influx of new narcotics that Europe has.

European dealers and users buy the new drugs online, paying by credit
cardand waiting for them to arrive in the mail. Les Iversen, chairman
of the U.K. government's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs said
this month customs officials at Heathrow Airport recently seized
shipments of white powder from China that were labeled as glucose but
turned out to be mephedrone. The packages were addressed to private
homes in the U.K., he said. The Home Office, which oversees the ACMD,
said it couldn't comment on the fate of the addressees.

A number of firms describing themselves as Chinese offer mephedrone
and other so-called designer drugs for sale online. Before they are
banned, some of the new drugs can be found in Europe in shopes selling
drug paraphernalia. To protect themselves from possible liability,
many sellers advertise the products as "plant food," "bath salts" or
"pond cleaner" not meant for human consumption, but buyers know this
is a ruse.

Spice, a synthetic cannabinoid that is similar to cannabis, became
popular in Europe in 2008 and was subsequently banned. The drug is
sprayed onto dried leaves such as rosehips, which users smoke.
Mephedrone and naphyrone are cathinones, a type of drug closely
related to amphetamines. They are sold as tablets or as powders that
can be snorted. The first cathinone was synthesized more than a
century ago, and aA few cathinones have been licensed in some
countries as treatments for depression and smoking cessation,
according to the ACMD.

Gareth Balmer, who works for a charity in Dundee, Scotland, that
counsels users about the harms of drugs, said he started hearing about
mephedrone in 2007, when it surfaced under the nickname Bubble Love.
"It really kind of exploded all the sudden. Very quickly we heard
about people getting in trouble with it-palpitations, rapid heartbeat,
anxiety," he says. Some young people were taking as many as 50 or 60
capsules a weekend, he says.

Schools in the area began warning children about the drug's dangers,
he says.Once mephedrone was banned in April, use dropped off among
young teenagers, but older teens don't seem bothered by its illegal
status, Mr. Balmer says.The drug was never licensed for this use, but
anyone wanting to produce it can find information about its chemical
structure in scientific publications, Dr. Deluca says. This is true
for many of the new drugs, experts say.

The U.K. ministry that banned mephedrone says it "can cause anxiety
and paranoid states, overstimulation of the cardiovascular system,
with risk of heart and circulatory problems; and overstimulation of
the nervous system, with risk of fits and of agitated and paranoid
states and hallucinations, as well as the risk of dependency."

After mephedrone was banned, some websites that had been selling it
began advertising NRG-1, or naphyrone, instead. They also began
selling MDAI, which was originally developed by scientists at Purdue
University as an experimental antidepressant, according to Paolo
Deluca, a senior research fellow and narcotics expert at King's
College London