The National Police seized in Burgos, on May 7, 20 kilos of a drug that had never been seized before in Spain. Its name is 4-CMC (4-chloromethcathinone) and it is similar to ecstasy. Both in its appearance and in the effect it produces on the consumer. The Dutch police intervened at the same time, in a warehouse in Rotterdam (Netherlands), 240 kilos of a similar substance called 3-MMC that was also destined for Spain. If that last shipment had reached its destination, the police could not have apprehended it as a drug cache. “Selling drugs is not the same as selling spoiled meat. If the substance in question is not controlled in Spain, as is the case of the 3-MMC that intervened in Rotterdam, it is not given the category of narcotic. And that is the problem. The only thing we can do in those cases is withdraw it for a crime against public health; as if it were spoiled meat and not drugs. The sentences in these cases, moreover, are about four times lighter”, illustrates the head of the 3rd Section of the Central Narcotics Brigade (UDYCO) of the National Police.
The authorities thus warn of a practice that seems to be increasing in recent times in Europe: the introduction from Asia of new synthetic drugs that have not yet been controlled. In other words, they have not been included in the drug lists by the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), an independent, quasi-judicial committee of experts, or by local governments. What is not on the list is not illegal.
This leads chemists to produce new substances with slight modifications, to circumvent European legislation. Gravel, Flakka, Charge+, Bomb or Fake Ecstasy are some of the colloquial names that have been consolidated among consumers to refer to some of these new drugs. The 4-CMC intervened in Burgos is an old acquaintance in the United Kingdom, where it bears the nickname of ‘fake ecstasy’ and last year reached about worrying levels of consumption in the UK clubbing scene.
In Spain it is indeed a controlled substance, but only very recently. It was in 2021 when they included it on the drug list. All that arrived before that year could not be considered as such. And there are still countries in Europe where this fake ecstasy is not included in the drug lists. Slovenia, Serbia or Estonia are some of the countries in which the 4-CMC can still roam freely. “This is already a global concern,” they point out from Narcotics of the National Police.
there is demand
“There is demand for this type of new substance that has not yet been controlled. They are not prosecuted for justice and that would be their competitive advantage over other similar drugs. As soon as the substance is under control and can be seized by the police, it stops making sense and is doomed to disappear. Then they set off to produce others that remain unchecked.”
The person who explains it is Claudio Vidal, director of projects at energy-control, an entity dedicated to the analysis of narcotic substances. It refers to the 4-CMC of Burgos which, like the 3-MMC of Rotterdam, is one of the so-called ‘synthetic catonines’. Stimulant drugs that are presented in powder or crystal form and have effects similar to MDMA or ecstasy and are administered orally or nasally, although there are also reports of cases of injected consumption.
They are mainly manufactured in China, the authentic world laboratory of laboratory psychoactives. The world’s second largest producer is India. The two countries have a powerful chemical industry and, in addition, it is easy to acquire precursors, the substances that will later be mixed in the laboratory to make the final drug.
The premise of the Asian chemists is to manufacture drugs that have effects similar to known narcotics but are not detectable by the police. A work of alchemy whose objective is to be able to travel through several countries without incurring a drug trafficking crime.
Once produced “they usually arrive by air or in sea containers, in 25 kilo cardboard barrels. Its appearance is similar to that of bath salts”, they say from the UDYCO. That is the problem that the police face to detect them: “Many barrels of bath salts fit in a container and not all of them can be analyzed”.
Lithuania, Russia or Czechia
“The traffickers seek access to countries where the controls are not strict. Not necessarily the Netherlands, although it is true that it is a country that continues to have the sex appeal of being the drug window to Europe and a lot of it continues to arrive. But the reality is that the controls there are exhaustive. We have been able to complete these operations thanks to good collaboration with the Dutch police. There are other places like Russia or Lithuaniawhere the controls are much more lax” conclude from the UDYCO. The Czech Republic is another of the countries where more synthetic drugs arrive in Europe from Asia.
Is 4-CMC a new drug? It is actually a substance created in the last decade. “We have evidence of the existence of this substance since 2014. In 2017 we saw some consumption patterns. But since 2018 we have received very few samples to analyze. 4 or 5, no more. It is not a newly created substance but something that was already on the market”, explains Claudio Vidal.
“In the family of synthetic catonines we find that almost all of them have a similar skeleton. Changing a molecule already converts it into a new substance. We do not expect there to be an increase in the production of 4-CMC, because when it becomes controlled, it loses that competitive advantage. The case of 3-MMC is different because in Spain it is not yet. When they audit it, it will suffer the same fate, “says Vidal.
The big problem with this type of substance, according to the head of the Section 3 of the UDYCO (a leading unit in Europe in the field of narcotics), is that the user does not know what he consumes. “When chemists modify the molecular structure of the substance to obtain another non-controlled one, they seek to produce something similar to another drug. Similar, but not the same. And that leads to effects that are not the same either, and sometimes they are lethal.”
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“When someone ingests an unknown substance, in the best of cases it will not go up. That they have been given caffeine cut with paracetamol as if they were amphetamines. That is the best of cases. There are also cases in which everything happens the opposite: poisoning by something they thought was a drug and it turns out to be something else. From time to time there are cases of festivals in which there are serious intoxications or people dieand it is not uncommon for it to be precisely because of this, because they have bought a new substance believing it to be ecstasy”. It should be remembered that in 2012 in Spain 21 people died from the consumption of a variant of amphetamine; a change that was tragic.
The future of the control of synthetic drugs passes, according to the police, through a kind of amendment to the whole: “Our proposal is that all synthetic cathinones be controlled. That way we won’t have this problem. If things continue as they are now, the drug manufacturers will always be ahead and we, sadly, will be behind. Drugs will be coming out and we will have to wait for them to be controlled. During that time they will circulate, without people knowing what they are getting into.”