Two ways to make a sub-standard legal high evolve from a poor quality amphetamine imitator to the most widely-used drug and cause of teen deaths:
1. Give it weird, exotic nicknames that absolutely no-one apart from journalists use. Examples include meow meow, drone, M-cat, plant food. Plant food is how it is described to circumvent the law. This does not mean it has become widely used slang terminology.
2. Slather the Daily Mail with coverage of any teen deaths involving the drug/warnings about its use/painting Professor Nutt to live up to his name. Anything the Daily Mail criticises is normally good (political correctness, health and safety, multiculturalism, feminism, socialism, music festivals, binge drinking, taxes) and so its condemnation does not help rationally-minded people stay away from it, even if it is rubbish.
3. Make sure the chair of the government's Advisory Council for the Misuse of Drugs (I'm patiently waiting for an Advisory Council for the Use of Drugs to teach young people how to roll joints and make lines) says things like this:
"I have never experienced such a widespread use in such a short space of time. There is no question this is the drug of the moment." And then make sure they get plenty of media coverage.
The only reason people are taking this drug is because they find out about it, and finding out about its status as the drug of the moment makes it seem even more zeitgeist and exciting, even though it patently isn't. Would be eternally more helpful to say:
"I have never experienced such a widespread use in such a short space of time. I have no idea why this is, considering it has produced so many deaths and there are safer and more interesting drugs available. Maybe if we did more laboratory tests and regulated these drugs then less people would die from consuming dodgy substances."
Reminds me a little of this: www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwylBRucU7w
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