Khat Juice is Pumping Up Israeli Hipsters at a Price

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Cathinone is the active ingredient in "Khat" and "Bath Salts". Likely this push with Bath Salts is underground J-Tribe in nature -- CSR

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Khat Juice is Pumping Up Israeli Hipsters at a Price

Tafline Laylin | June 13th, 2012 | 3 Comments | Email this
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narcotics, drugs, khat, Yemen, Israel, food, healthAn illuminating article in Haaretz describes how certain industrious Israelis realized the marketing potential of khat juice – an exhilarating stimulant made from extracts of Catha edulis and other ingredients – and turned the potent drink into one of the most highly sought after drugs in all of Tel Aviv.

Dafna Arad goes into significant detail about the local social and health impact of this new trend, describing a society so eager to prolong their dancing and productive hours that they are flocking to restaurants to buy it, but does a little less to address the trend's potential environmental consequence or its greater social impact.

What goes up must come down

Cultivated primarily in the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa, khat is illegal in many countries because it is known to be addictive, to cause high blood pressure and may even set off psychosis in long-term users. Also, as with most "uppers," there is inevitably a downside.

"Khat can also affect sleep, leading to rebound effects such as late awakening, decreased productivity and day-time sleepiness," the World Health Organization (WHO) reported. This crash tends to set off a vicious cycle whereby using more ghat is necessary to maintain the acute concentration and high energy that often comes with chewing ghat stems or drinking this new bespoke drink.

Available on Facebook and at kiosks in both Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, khat is legal in Israel, largely because the authorities were loathe to deprive a certain demographic of a longstanding tradition. But that could change if the current craze gets out of hand.

The Israel Anti-Drug Authority is mulling over "khat juice sales" and – together with the Justice and Health Ministries and the Israel Police – is working toward formulating recommendations, according to Haaretz.

"The growing use of khat and its use as an ingredient in drinks served in bars, clubs and restaurants is problematic, but the legal solution must also provide an answer to the issue of equality before the law as this relates to the use of all khat products," the authority told the paper.

Are khat sales funding terror?

Meanwhile, as the novelty begins to wear off, many users are beginning to realize the downside of using khat. Nir Tzuk, a chef at Cordelia's in Jaffa, used to sell khat juice to his customers after exclaiming how it boosted his productivity at the restaurant. But he has since stopped after realizing that going without sleep and skipping meals, common side effects of regular users, was driving his body "into a tizzy."

Interestingly, even observant Israelis who normally abstain from alcohol, marijuana and other drugs will drink khat juice, even though it contains cathinone, an amphetamine-like alkaloid. Hame'orav in Tel Aviv sells each glass for about $6 and youth are said to be visiting in bus loads, totally ignorant of the wider implications of their purchase.

Everything comes from somewhere and there's good reason to believe that khat may be funding terror in Somalia. The Dutch government is so convinced of this that they are working towards banning the narcotic and encouraging those western countries that haven't already done so to follow suit.

In Yemen, where chewing khat stems is a way of life for 90% of the country's men, khat crops have displaced subsistence farms and – a water-intensive crop – exarcerbated existing water shortages. Families are suffering too. Men and women who chew too much khat abandon their domestic responsibilities in favor of spending hour of hour getting mildly high.

We haven't seen any studies that compare ghat with alcohol or marijuana, for example, in order to gauge which has a lesser environmental, fiscal and social impact, but we are curious to see if the trend will be arrested before any serious consequences sprout.

:: Haaretz
http://www.haaretz.com/culture/food-win ... m-1.432044


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Cathinone

Systematic (IUPAC) name
(S)-2-amino-1-phenyl-1-propanone


Cathinone, or benzoylethanamine (marketed as hagigat in Israel[1]), is a monoamine alkaloid found in the shrub Catha edulis (khat) and is chemically similar to ephedrine, cathine and other amphetamines. Cathinone induces the release of dopamine from striatal preparations that are prelabelled either with dopamine or its precursors.[2] It is probably the main contributor to the stimulant effect of Catha edulis. Cathinone differs from many other amphetamines in that it has a ketone functional group. Other amphetamines that share this structure include the antidepressant bupropion and the stimulant methcathinone, among others.

Internationally, cathinone is a Schedule I drug under the Convention on Psychotropic Substances.[3] Circa 1993, the DEA added cathinone to the Controlled Substances Act's Schedule I.

The sale of khat is legal in some jurisdictions, but illegal in others — see Khat#Regulation.

Chemistry
The molecular structure of cathinone.

Cathinone is structurally related to methcathinone, in much the same way as amphetamine is related to methamphetamine. Cathinone differs from amphetamine by possessing a ketone oxygen atom (C=O) on the β (beta) position of the side chain. The corresponding alcohol compound cathine is a less powerful stimulant. The biophysiological conversion from cathinone to cathine is to blame for the depotentiation of khat leaves over time. Fresh leaves have a greater ratio of cathinone to cathine than dried ones, therefore having more psychoactive effects.

Cathinone can be extracted from Catha edulis, or synthesized from α-bromopropiophenone (which is easily made from propiophenone).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathinone

Toxic effects

Excessive cathinone usage can cause loss of appetite, anxiety, irritability, insomnia, hallucinations and panic attacks. Chronic abusers are at risk of developing personality disorders and of sustaining myocardial infarction.[4] Please note that the drug referred to in this article was actually the closely related mephedrone, a cathinone derivative which does not occur in nature. Mephedrone is more potent as a releasing agent of serotonin compared to cathinone or methcathinone, hence its use in party pills as a "legal" replacement for MDMA. Persons driving under the influence of the drug have had their serum or urine tested for the presence of cathinone and norephedrine, a major metabolite.[5]
See also

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

"Bath Salts" come from "rogue chemists all over the world"... of course like MDMA... so you know what that usually means --->  
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Bath salts hit U.S. 'like a freight train'

    Article by: PAM LOUWAGIE , Star Tribune
    Updated: September 19, 2011 - 7:57 AM

Almost unknown in 2009, designer drugs and their psychotic effects alarm police, doctors.


WINONA, MINN.

The boom of a gunshot jolted Sue Stark out of bed. Did it come from the yard?

Holding her breath as she ran down the stairs to the garage, Stark flung open the door. Her 32-year-old son, Tim, calmly came inside clutching a Winchester rifle. She grabbed the gun and called 911.

"Can't you see them? There's people messing with my car," she remembers him saying as he paced from window to window in the living room, flipping on yard lights and peering outside. "There they are."

Sue looked. The dark street was empty.

Stark learned that night in May that her son, who she said had a history of chemical abuse, had taken a man-made substance with the slang name "plant food," better known as bath salts. Of all the new synthetic drugs alarming health and law enforcement officials in Minnesota and across the country, none has exploded into the culture over the past year as quickly -- or as dangerously.

"I have never, ever seen him that bad in my life," Sue Stark said of her son. "He could have killed somebody."

Cheap to buy, easy to find and mistakenly seen by some users as a legal and mostly harmless alternative to cocaine and other stimulants, bath salts have become the source of a new wave of worried calls to poison control centers nationwide. Last year, those centers received about 300 calls about the synthetic drug.

Already this year, they have logged more than 4,700.

Emergency room doctors, meanwhile, are being forced to take extreme steps to treat some bath salt users who are showing up at hospitals intensely agitated, delusional and even violent. Law enforcement officers are also reporting struggles to subdue hallucinating users who are fighting imaginary people. Some bath salt users are ending up in psychiatric wards.

"It came on like a freight train," said Mark Ryan, long-time poison center director in Louisiana, where the bath salts craze hit early. Bath salts often seem to cause scarier hallucinations than LSD, Ryan said, and sometimes provide the super-human strength of PCP. Far more users experience severe effects compared to other drugs, he said.

"It was just creating havoc for us," Ryan said. "It's not like it's just a bad drug, it's like a superbad drug."

'All over the place'

Bath salts first appeared in the United States in 2009, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). The drugs are so new that federal agencies are still analyzing their toll, but research conducted by the Star Tribune indicates the products have been confirmed or suspected in more than 15 deaths nationwide.

At least 30 states have banned certain bath salt chemicals, including Minnesota, but the products remain widely available on the Internet. Despite their name, the drugs are far different -- and far more expensive -- than ordinary bath products.

"The availability is so all over the place ... that's why it's getting so popular," said Dr. Akikur Mohammad, an assistant clinical professor in psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Southern California. He is studying the effects of bath salts in people.

The products are typically sold in powder form in plastic or foil packages and sold under various names, including Bliss, Ivory Wave and Vanilla Sky. The drugs are usually snorted but can also be smoked, injected or swallowed, according to the DEA.

Like cocaine and other stimulants, bath salts initially might make people feel energized and happy longer than other drugs, experts said. When the initial high dies down, users take more and can end up addicted, hallucinating, panicked and violent.

Chemical components of bath salts can vary. Typically they contain one of several man-made substances related to the illegal khat plant, a popular stimulant in East African countries. Bath salts come from rogue chemists all over the world and have been sold for $40 to $140 a gram. The effects of taking them can differ greatly, experts say, sometimes mimicking ecstasy, cocaine or methamphetamine.

"It is weird that the same brand name applies to such different chemicals," said Mark A.R. Kleiman, a University of California, Los Angeles, professor who studies drug policy. "That just strikes me as odd, and I think sort of unprecedented."

Before bath salts became a problem in the United States, they found popularity in Europe. The United Kingdom banned the bath salt drug mephedrone in April 2010, but a study published in the Journal of Substance Use found that it remained popular in two London clubs last year, second only to cocaine.

In the United States, there is little doubt about the popularity of bath salts. So far this year, the number of bath salt calls coming into poison control centers is twice the volume of heroin-related calls in 2009, the most recent year for which heroin data was available.

http://www.startribune.com/local/130023373.html