Smiles

It seems that nearly everyday I hear about a new designer drug.  One source of information is my morning paper.  The typical story is a teenager who tries the new drug and subsequently dies.  The article will quote the parents and the police.  Last week I read this  YAHOO Shine  report on 2C-I. 

"Smiles" or 2C-I is the latest designer hallucinogenic amphetamine.  It follows other designer drugs with similar names.  The effects all seem the be the same.  The users describe vivid hallucinations, or a friend finds the user dead.  These new drugs are all illegal in the US and many other countries.  Originally developed by a psychopharmacologist many years ago as new research compounds.  The compounding process has been simplified and is available for basement chemists to make their own drug.  So why did the teenager is this article die?  How about quality control.  I do not believe there is the same concerns with quality when someone is making a drug in their basement as compared with Abbott making Vicodin.  When you purchase a street drug do you really have any idea what is in it?  Does that chocolate bar have just enough drug for a nice high?  or a lethal dose.  Whereas you know every Vicodin tablet has the correct anount of hydrocodone.  I equate the use of designer drug to eating puffer fish.  Eat a meal prepared by a high quality Fugu chef and your mouth tingles from just the right amount of the neurotoxin in the fish.  Eat puffer fish prepared by some guy in an alley and you get a load of the neurotoxin and stop breathing. 

Its all about quality control.  Are designer drugs safe?  Certainly not.  Do they kill every user.  No.  Remember, its all about the dose.