6 ms·

Disappearance of flakka, synthetic drug that pushed South Florida to the brink

47 points by fraXis 11y ago

DevUps 11y ago
Great, now I want to try Flakka. Thanks Obama.
ChuckMcM 11y ago
Guess the test was successful and the CIA^h^h^hcompany moved on :-) I am constantly amazed by the way in which people will try anything to get high. Given the ability to compound pretty much anything with anything you know its going to result in a bunch of these sorts of experiences. I guess its how you A/B test drug compounds when you aren't looking for FDA approval.
- CapitalistCartr 11y ago
  In my younger days I had occasion to spend four months in a county jail. The more regular inmates would go to a medical appointment, and no matter what pills they were issued, on returning, he and a couple friends would get together, one would tell a guard they had a headache and get two aspirin. They would then grind up all and snort it. I never saw the point or the wisdom, but they'd even snort antibiotics.
  - imperialdrive 11y ago
    WOW
- kingmanaz 11y ago
  >I am constantly amazed by the way in which people will try anything to get high. Research "jenkem". Doubt anything will ever top it. Proof even amazement is finite.
  - eru 11y ago
    Wikipedia and snopes say it's a hoax.
    - kingmanaz 11y ago
      That's because it paints black people in a negative light. Search for videos of its use, they're out there.
- woodman 11y ago
  Pasting. 4chan did not have a hard time convincing a lot of people to spread toothpaste on their nipples.
pavel_lishin 11y ago
> Tasers didn’t always work on flakka users. And talking them down never did. Deputies had to wrestle users to the ground, punching them to gain control, Tianga said. The official protocol was to attack and attack hard. It looked brutal. I don't really understand this. How can tazers not work? It's a physiological reaction, right? Electric current prevents your nerves from working. How is punching more effective than that?
- 55555 11y ago
  This is a human interest piece. We have no need for science here. Another example: "The chemical attached itself to brain pathways with such ferocity..." You see, this chemical was downright ferocious. We have anthropomorphized it past the point of science being relevant.
- burkaman 11y ago
  There's two levels of tasers, I think. The older and weaker kind causes a lot of pain, but doesn't totally disable your muscles. You can resist if you have a high pain tolerance or are too high to feel it. There's a newer and stronger kind that's actually impossible to resist, but it might be less widespread, and it's also somewhat controversial because it's more dangerous and potentially deadly for people with heart problems.
  - thebaer 11y ago
    Plus if it's a taser, where the probes are shot out, you can potentially be "stunning" a small area of the body, depending on how far away they were shot from. The video in the article shows a dude impaled on a fence for 30 minutes high on this stuff. If that doesn't show you the kind of pain tolerance you get...
- bcoates 11y ago
  It's bullshit. Cops (and the media) will repeat and exaggerate the most preposterous nonsense they can find if the subject is drugs. Doubly so if it lets them excuse things they were going to do anyway, like beat the shit out of a black dude for giving them lip. What this article is describing is such a typical moral panic that it should be in a museum somewhere as a type specimen. http://www.snopes.com/crime/warnings/jenkem.asp http://www.snopes.com/crime/warnings/jenkem.asp
fiatmoney 11y ago
Explanation: there are tons of less-conspicuous synthetics the same factories could be pumping out instead. Lots of publicity & graphic anecdotes leads to pressure which isn't good for anyone. "flakka was just one of hundreds of lab-made substances so new that governments did not have time to identify and ban them. Hall, at Nova Southeastern University, made sure to bring up the China connection in media interviews last summer... ... When they returned, China announced that back on Oct. 1 it had banned 116 different synthetic drugs, including fentanyl and flakka"
contingencies 11y ago
This is a pretty bad article, with little science and lots of tabloid qualities. Like I suspect many other readers, I had never heard of alpha-PVP, though. Obligatory Erowid link: https://www.erowid.org/chemicals/a-pvp/a-pvp.shtml https://www.erowid.org/chemicals/a-pvp/a-pvp.shtml "Euphoric Stimulant" ... "Its dose, effects, and duration are similar to those of MDPV. Chemically, it is a synthetic cathinone, and first became popular in the US in 2013."
hoodoof 11y ago
Development of synthetic drugs would not happen if all drugs were legal and available cheap. If available and cheap, then people would get their high from the "known" drugs.
- brandonmenc 11y ago
  > would not happen Wishful thinking. And there might be synthetic drugs that aren't "bad."
joshontheweb 11y ago
The media and law enforcement have been so misleadingly sensational in the past about every drug that it is hard to take them seriously anymore. Flakka sure sounds pretty bad but who could know? After watching Reefer Madness you realize that you can't trust a thing that comes out of their mouths. I was systematically filled with all sorts of non truths about drugs as a kid in the DARE program. You don't forget being misled like that when you are so impressionable.
- trhway 11y ago
  >you can't trust a thing that comes out of their mouths. I was systematically filled with all sorts of non truths about drugs as a kid in the DARE program. while we didn't have drugs, i remember that 2 big scares adults were filling us with were proved by experience through like 4-6th grade to be fundamentally untrue, ie. even after 40 years in the ground the WWII munitions without detonators don't accidentally explode just by virtue of disturbing/moving them (it is actually some effort to make them explode), and your palms don't become hairy.
  - eru 11y ago
    Oh, I always assumed the WWII munitions caution in eg Germany was (a) general good gun culture (as an extension of `always treat weapons like they are loaded') and (b) a relict of earlier times just after the war.
    - makomk 11y ago
      No, the WWII munitions caution in Germany is because some of them are still deadly: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/routine-disposal-goes-wrong-three-killed-in-explosion-of-world-war-ii-bomb-in-germany-a-698245.html http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/routine-disposal...
  - makomk 11y ago
    The trouble with WWII munitions buried in the ground is that a lot of them do still have detonators and after being buried in the ground for a few decades you have no idea what state they're in - they can be rather rather unstable. Some of the bombs were also designed to detonate when moved in order to kill bomb disposal workers.
jtmcmc 11y ago
Dangers of Flakka are related largely to the prohibition of substances such as MDMA creates a black market where the desired drug is in fact adulterated or substituted with drugs such as alpha-PVP (flakka) or other cathinones, piperazines, etc...

47 points by fraXis 11y ago

Great, now I want to try Flakka. Thanks Obama.

Guess the test was successful and the CIA^h^h^hcompany moved on :-) I am constantly amazed by the way in which people will try anything to get high. Given the ability to compound pretty much anything with anything you know its going to result in a bunch of these sorts of experiences. I guess its how you A/B test drug compounds when you aren't looking for FDA approval.

CapitalistCartr 11y ago
In my younger days I had occasion to spend four months in a county jail. The more regular inmates would go to a medical appointment, and no matter what pills they were issued, on returning, he and a couple friends would get together, one would tell a guard they had a headache and get two aspirin. They would then grind up all and snort it. I never saw the point or the wisdom, but they'd even snort antibiotics.
- imperialdrive 11y ago
  WOW
kingmanaz 11y ago
>I am constantly amazed by the way in which people will try anything to get high. Research "jenkem". Doubt anything will ever top it. Proof even amazement is finite.
- eru 11y ago
  Wikipedia and snopes say it's a hoax.
  - kingmanaz 11y ago
    That's because it paints black people in a negative light. Search for videos of its use, they're out there.
woodman 11y ago
Pasting. 4chan did not have a hard time convincing a lot of people to spread toothpaste on their nipples.

pavel_lishin 11y ago

> Tasers didn’t always work on flakka users. And talking them down never did. Deputies had to wrestle users to the ground, punching them to gain control, Tianga said. The official protocol was to attack and attack hard. It looked brutal. I don't really understand this. How can tazers not work? It's a physiological reaction, right? Electric current prevents your nerves from working. How is punching more effective than that?

55555 11y ago
This is a human interest piece. We have no need for science here. Another example: "The chemical attached itself to brain pathways with such ferocity..." You see, this chemical was downright ferocious. We have anthropomorphized it past the point of science being relevant.
burkaman 11y ago
There's two levels of tasers, I think. The older and weaker kind causes a lot of pain, but doesn't totally disable your muscles. You can resist if you have a high pain tolerance or are too high to feel it. There's a newer and stronger kind that's actually impossible to resist, but it might be less widespread, and it's also somewhat controversial because it's more dangerous and potentially deadly for people with heart problems.
- thebaer 11y ago
  Plus if it's a taser, where the probes are shot out, you can potentially be "stunning" a small area of the body, depending on how far away they were shot from. The video in the article shows a dude impaled on a fence for 30 minutes high on this stuff. If that doesn't show you the kind of pain tolerance you get...
bcoates 11y ago
It's bullshit. Cops (and the media) will repeat and exaggerate the most preposterous nonsense they can find if the subject is drugs. Doubly so if it lets them excuse things they were going to do anyway, like beat the shit out of a black dude for giving them lip. What this article is describing is such a typical moral panic that it should be in a museum somewhere as a type specimen. http://www.snopes.com/crime/warnings/jenkem.asp http://www.snopes.com/crime/warnings/jenkem.asp

fiatmoney 11y ago

Explanation: there are tons of less-conspicuous synthetics the same factories could be pumping out instead. Lots of publicity & graphic anecdotes leads to pressure which isn't good for anyone. "flakka was just one of hundreds of lab-made substances so new that governments did not have time to identify and ban them. Hall, at Nova Southeastern University, made sure to bring up the China connection in media interviews last summer... ... When they returned, China announced that back on Oct. 1 it had banned 116 different synthetic drugs, including fentanyl and flakka"

contingencies 11y ago

This is a pretty bad article, with little science and lots of tabloid qualities. Like I suspect many other readers, I had never heard of alpha-PVP, though. Obligatory Erowid link: https://www.erowid.org/chemicals/a-pvp/a-pvp.shtml https://www.erowid.org/chemicals/a-pvp/a-pvp.shtml "Euphoric Stimulant" ... "Its dose, effects, and duration are similar to those of MDPV. Chemically, it is a synthetic cathinone, and first became popular in the US in 2013."

hoodoof 11y ago

Development of synthetic drugs would not happen if all drugs were legal and available cheap. If available and cheap, then people would get their high from the "known" drugs.

brandonmenc 11y ago
> would not happen Wishful thinking. And there might be synthetic drugs that aren't "bad."

joshontheweb 11y ago

The media and law enforcement have been so misleadingly sensational in the past about every drug that it is hard to take them seriously anymore. Flakka sure sounds pretty bad but who could know? After watching Reefer Madness you realize that you can't trust a thing that comes out of their mouths. I was systematically filled with all sorts of non truths about drugs as a kid in the DARE program. You don't forget being misled like that when you are so impressionable.

trhway 11y ago
>you can't trust a thing that comes out of their mouths. I was systematically filled with all sorts of non truths about drugs as a kid in the DARE program. while we didn't have drugs, i remember that 2 big scares adults were filling us with were proved by experience through like 4-6th grade to be fundamentally untrue, ie. even after 40 years in the ground the WWII munitions without detonators don't accidentally explode just by virtue of disturbing/moving them (it is actually some effort to make them explode), and your palms don't become hairy.
- eru 11y ago
  Oh, I always assumed the WWII munitions caution in eg Germany was (a) general good gun culture (as an extension of `always treat weapons like they are loaded') and (b) a relict of earlier times just after the war.
  - makomk 11y ago
    No, the WWII munitions caution in Germany is because some of them are still deadly: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/routine-disposal-goes-wrong-three-killed-in-explosion-of-world-war-ii-bomb-in-germany-a-698245.html http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/routine-disposal...
- makomk 11y ago
  The trouble with WWII munitions buried in the ground is that a lot of them do still have detonators and after being buried in the ground for a few decades you have no idea what state they're in - they can be rather rather unstable. Some of the bombs were also designed to detonate when moved in order to kill bomb disposal workers.

jtmcmc 11y ago

Dangers of Flakka are related largely to the prohibition of substances such as MDMA creates a black market where the desired drug is in fact adulterated or substituted with drugs such as alpha-PVP (flakka) or other cathinones, piperazines, etc...