Bath Salts and Plant Food

Question 1

Bath Salts ect.

Answer 1

• family of design stimulant drugs that have become popular alternative to traditional drugs like cocaine and MDMA
• types in circulation change over time (as one type becomes illegal new types emerge)
• most dangerous can harm or kill user

Question 2

Danger of designer drugs

Answer 2

• drugs considered illegal based on chemical structure so change structure
• dangers: no acute or long term testing, no idea of LD50, dosing found by trial and error, interesting side effects

Question 3

Synthetic cathinones

Answer 3

• mephedrone one of first reported components of bath salts (4-methylmethcathinone)
• cathinone is a naturally occurring drug found in the plant Khat
• Khat made illegal so made derivatives

Question 4

Why did cathinone derivatives become so popular?

Answer 4

• increase in use corresponded with decreased purity in traditional drugs of abuse
• hard to keep up with drug usage (hard to keep up with market, see spikes of usage and damage that comes with it) *more about this in notes

Question 5

Administration

Answer 5

• most common routes are snorting and ingestion (keying and parachuting/bombing)
• > both methods used to obtain quick onset with prolonged effects
• MDPV is highly lipophilic so can produce effects with very small does but tend to have shorter duration

Question 6

Structures

Answer 6

• mephedrone is semisynthetic derived from cathinone
• cathinone and its derivatives are known as beta ketonated AMPHs
• ketone group makes more polar and slower than AMPH to cross BBB (exception MDPV because of tertiary amino group
• some structurally similar to AMPH some methAMPH
• methylone and MDPV are similar to MDMA