Mephodrone, for those that dont know is a floury white powder sold as plant fertilizer which our beloved student population purchase and then shove up their noses as a legal alternative to MDMA. You might have heard it referred to as "MDEA", "MDCA", "plant food", or "that legal shit".

The sort of people that you would expect to be dabbling in a new designer drug would be the seasoned drug takers who you always find at the front of the rave slowly devouring their own faces, or the people that you only ever see in the second half of the week as they stumble into university stinking of weed regaling any and everyone with tales of how they got so fucked up on ket and blue cheese that they called themselves an ambulance. Crazzzyyy daayysss!!!!.

However, this legal alternative has somehow managed to lose almost all of the negative press that ketamine, ecstasy and your other "bog standard" class-A's have had to put up with, and become acceptable to those people who until now turned their nose up at the first mention of "drugs".  Because its legal people who've never even so much as snorted a Vicks inhaler are suddenly filling with their pockets (and noses) with the stuff. Hey - its cheap and it makes you chat complete and utter bollocks for three hours whilst your nose gradually disintegrates as you sniffle and snort your way through the party and at the end of it all you can collapse into bed twitching and muttering, safe in the (apparent) knowledge that you havent done anything anything illegal or dangerous and that you dont have to feel guilty about what your mother would think.

What i dont understand is why this is happening? Why are people throwing all common sense out of the window and taking these substances which are as bad or maybe even worse than traditional recreational drugs simply because they're legal? Really kids, it might be legal but that's only because it's marketed as plant feed, not as a narcotic.

The fact of the matter is this: just because something is legal doesn't mean it's safe. Plenty of people take plenty of drugs all the time, but most of them know the dangers. The worrying thing about Mephedrone is that people are shovelling it up their noses and assuming that just because they can buy it in a shop it won't harm them - I'm sure there's plenty of substances in your sink cupboard that would probably get you just as mashed, but you don't see people walking round swigging detergent do you? (Well, maybe a few...)

I know theres not much point in writing this article because Mephodrone is the buzz drug and no one is gonna stop taking it for a while, at least while it remains legal. I just think it needs saying.

People should think more about what they're putting in their bodies.