Six months ago, 26-year-old Kevin’s (name changed) life seemed like every young man’s fantasy come true. A fancy job in a fashion retail company, wads of disposable income, great friends, and a robust dating life — he had it all. “I was so happy,” he says. The bubble burst around three months ago. There was “an incident” at home which, he says, is too painful to talk about. “All I can reveal is that I got extremely violent and aggressive with my family,” he says, softly. This outburst opened a can of worms. Kevin confessed to his family that he had been secretly consuming a white substance called Mephedrone almost every night. “The first time I used it was the most amazing experience ever,” he recalls. “I was with a girl I had been casually dating for a while and she suggested I snort this white powder while we were having sex.”

That one experience had him coming back for more. “I enjoyed it. It made me very sexual. I had a string of casual flings after I started using it.” The first time Kevin needed to buy the drug himself, he asked his friends for help, all of whom were already habitual users. “I started by paying ₹1,200 for a gram, which hardly pinched because I was making good money. And then it got cheaper and cheaper,” he says. Soon, it seemed like he had discovered the answer to all his problems. Always on the chubby side, he found that he was magically losing inches. “I’ve always dreamt of a flat stomach. For the first time I could eat donuts and continue dropping weight. I couldn’t help but return to it,” he says.

Since 2013-end, Mephedrone has been making all the wrong headlines in Mumbai. According to reports, Kevin is among the 1.5 lakh-plus users in the city. What’s worrying is that most of them are teens, some as young as 12. It is manufactured in Maharashtra and can be easily prepared in a small lab. “I’ve not seen another drug which gives such a strong rush till today. It is indescribable. You forget all your worries and feel euphoric instantly. The rush is so good that, whenever you feel a little low, it makes you want to run to the drug. It causes sleeplessness and loss of appetite,” says leading psychiatrist Dr Harish Shetty.

This designer drug goes by several names. Its chemical name is 4-methylmethcathinone. A hipper appellation of that is M-CAT, MD or Meow Meow. Shetty refers to it as “a poor man’s cocaine”. Like cocaine, this too is a white crystalline powder, but is far cheaper. “Cocaine was an upper-class phenomenon. People who took cannabis were on a lesser budget. They have now graduated to Mephedrone,” he adds.

Lucy in the sky

Mumbai and its history of drug abuse go back a long way. According to urban legend, the ’70s were defined by cannabis, ’80s saw an explosion of brown sugar, and the ’90s were marked by ecstasy and cocaine busts at rave parties. The Directorate of Forensic Science Laboratory (DFSL) in Mumbai works on thousands of drug-related cases every year. Samples of the drugs that the Mumbai police procure from peddlers, drug busts and other operations are sent to their labs for testing. Last year, they tested 4,000 drug samples, of which around 150 turned out to be Mephedrone. This, they say, is an alarming number since they had never received this drug before 2014. “Mephedrone is similar to the amphetamine family of drugs. It also takes longer to test. Normally we can test a drug in a day or two, but Mephedrone takes us almost a week,” says Dr NL Chutke, deputy director of DFSL.

In February, the government officially added Mephedrone to the list of illegal drugs under the Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act of 1985, joining countries such as the US, UK, Australia and Israel, which had banned it a couple of years ago. But throughout last year, when the Mephedrone wave spread, the Mumbai police had their hands tied. Without the law to back them, they couldn’t make arrests or dole out strict punishments. “My first reaction was that a person should file a PIL in the High Court for its inclusion. But there is a section which says that if any amendment is to be made to the NDPS Act, it has to pass through the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha. The court could not pass orders to the House. That is why I started awareness campaigns. I went to schools and colleges and started drug-free campaigns,” says Suhas Gokhale, senior police inspector of Azad Maidan anti-narcotics cell.

Over the past few months, Dr Yusuf Matcheswala, honorary professor of psychiatry at GT Hospital and JJ Group of Hospitals, has daily been attending to around 10 patients addicted to Mephedrone. He runs a de-addiction clinic within Masina Hospital, in central Mumbai, which has a number of youngsters who have been forcefully admitted by concerned parents. Gokhale has found that, like Kevin’s family, most parents are oblivious to the effects of Mephedrone until it gets too late. “Alcohol, charas and ganja have a smell, but this doesn’t. Users can walk straight, and their speech is not slurred. But parents get confused when they see their children staying up all night or losing weight. They think it is, maybe, because of exam pressure,” he says. Habitual users show symptoms like aggression and grinding of teeth. “Whatever its ingredients, this drug is most damaging. It is neurotoxic. After using it people can dance all night or drive at great speed,” explains Matcheswala.

We are only beginning to understand the effects of the drug, which can lead to serious injury and even death. Early this month an 18-year-old mother in the UK died from two heart attacks after taking the drug at a party. Another 19-year-old in the UK is reported to have cut off his penis and stabbed his mother 11 times after abusing the drug. The ignorance about the drug and its effects is what is most dangerous at this time.

Ravi, a media professional in his 20s, mistakenly bought Mephedrone from a peddler in Goa in December 2013. Since then, he says, he has used it a couple of times in the presence of his friends. “I was celebrating New Year’s with a few friends when we decided to buy some cocaine. What we were given looked exactly like cocaine, but it felt different. I remember being awake for 72 hours straight. I was highly energised. But once the high started to wear off, I felt awful. I was tempted to buy some more,” he recalls. A few months later, when the media started actively reporting on this new drug in the city, Ravi realised that what he had used was actually Meow Meow. “It is highly addictive and so easy to use — you just have to swallow it. The papers say that is has become as cheap as ₹100, but I’ve never paid so little,” he says.

Stanching the flow

One of the biggest challenges ahead for the police is to curb the easy availability of the drug. Initially, you could order it online and have it delivered to your doorstep. Some sites sell it as plant feed but in several popular listing sites, all you have to do is type Mephedrone and numerous options will appear. “I once placed an order for 2kg. I kept talking with the dealer to find out more about them. I offered to go to the office and pay. Eventually they got suspicious and the deal didn’t happen,” says Gokhale.

In most cases, youngsters are turning peddlers themselves and propagating the drug amongst peers. Doctors say several of their young patients have confessed to making huge sums of money by selling the drugs in colleges. “Dealers make small packets of one gram each. Children who don’t have the money will come to them. The dealers give them five packets, and ask them to sell four to their other friends on their behalf. In exchange, the child gets to keep the fifth for free,” explains Gokhale.

With the new law, the police hope to crack down harder on peddlers. The punishment for consumption is six months of jail. If a person is caught with more than 2gm but less than 50gm, the jail term can be two to 10 years. And more than 50gm, which means a commercial quantity, would attract not less than 10 years’ imprisonment.

Ironically, the biggest drug bust since the new law was implemented involved a police constable who was arrested after the cops seized 110kg of Mephedrone from his home in the Satara district of Maharashtra. This seizure pointed to ‘Baby’ or Shashikala Patankar — Mumbai’s most wanted Meow Meow peddler, whom the police have finally nabbed. Her arrest will certainly help the police in their battle against Mephedrone.

For now, Kevin is trying to get his life back on track. He plans to move to a new job and city --- wherever his past can’t haunt him.

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