*I always wondered how long it would take for Somalian khat to go mainstream. For a couple of decades now the bloodstained youngsters who man Somali "technicals," those regional pickup trucks with machine guns, have been steadily munching this stuff. Nobody else wanted to mess with khat because it looks and it probably tastes like broomstraw.
* Now the chemical active component in khat has been picked up by the rave scene. "Meow-meow" is all over Britain this season, still legal for the time being, but with a full-scale moral panic setting in.
*Why khat? Why is this happening? Because there's an Ecstasy famine. The cops have cracked down on Ecstasy's chemical precursors, and since the narcotics mob is way too ill-organized to defend or even understand its own means of industrial production, they've had to drift elsewhere. When it comes to chemical production they stink, but when it comes to headless, p-2-p distribution, the dope scene is the picture of efficiency.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18712-miaowmiaow-on-trial-truth-or-trumpedup-charges.html
http://www.state.gov/p/inl/rls/nrcrpt/2006/vol1/html/62105.htm
*Seen any Quaaludes lately? They were huge in the 70s. The precursor tactic exterminated them.
*Meanwhile, somewhere in a shotgun-shack out on "Copperhead Road":
http://www.everyherbal.com/herbalfire/catha-edulis-khat-seeds-p-40.html
