page_title: Club drug
section_title: Misrepresentation
hierarchical_section_title: Club drug / Effects / Risks and adverse effects / Misrepresentation
caption_attribution_description: English: ECSTASY MIMIC TABLET (CONTAINING BENZYLPIPERAZINE (BZP), METHAMPHETAMINE, AND CAFFEINE) IN SIKESTON, MISSOURI Photo 1 The Missouri State Highway Patrol Troop E Laboratory (Cape Girardeau) recently received one round, green tablet with a poorly defined logo, suspected “Ecstasy” (see Photo 1). The tablet was seized in Sikeston, Missouri by the Sikeston Department of Public Safety (details sensitive; Sikeston is about 150 south of St. Louis). The tablet was 9 millimeters in diameter by 3 millimeters thick, and weighed 290 milligrams. Analysis by color testing (Marquis and Methedrine) and GC/MS, however, indicated not MDMA but rather benzyl piperazine (BZP), methamphetamine, and caffeine in an approximate 300:6:85 ratio (based on the TIC; not formally quantitated). This was the first submission of BZP in any form to the laboratory. [Editor’s Notes: The logo may be four “playing card”-type diamonds arranged in a diamond pattern. Informal inquiries suggest that this is a new logo, not previously reported in either Europe or the U.S. The weight of the tablet (290 milligrams) is rather high for the tablet dimensions (9 x 3 millimeters), but was confirmed by a second weighing, suggesting that it was very highly compressed.] http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/programs/forensicsci/microgram/mg1007/mg1007.html
context_page_description: Club drugs, also called rave drugs, or party drugs are a loosely defined category of recreational drugs which are associated with discothèques in the 1970s and nightclubs, dance clubs, electronic dance music parties, and raves in the 1980s to today. Unlike many other categories, such as opiates and benzodiazepines, which are established according to pharmaceutical or chemical properties, club drugs are a "category of convenience", in which drugs are included due to the locations they are consumed and/or where the user goes while under the influence of the drugs. Club drugs are generally used by teens and young adults. This group of drugs are also called "designer drugs", as most are synthesized in a chemical lab rather than being sourced from plants or opiates.
  Club drugs range from entactogens such as MDMA, 2C-B and inhalants to stimulants, depressants/sedatives and psychedelic and hallucinogenic drugs. Dancers at all-night parties and dance events have used some of these drugs for their stimulating properties since the 1960s Mod subculture in U.K., whose members took amphetamine to stay up all night.
context_section_description: In many cases, illegal club drugs are misrepresented. That is, a dealer will tell a purchaser that she/he has a certain illegal drug for sale, while in fact the dealer's pills, capsules or bags of powder do not contain that chemical. For example, MDMA ("ecstasy") is very hard to synthesize in illegal underground labs, and methamphetamine is much easier (it can be made from household chemicals and over-the-counter cold remedies containing pseudoephedrine). As such, what dealers sell as MDMA is often methamphetamine powder. Similarly, pills sold by drug dealers as LSD, a drug which only the top chemists have the training to synthesize, most often contain no LSD; instead, they often contain PCP, a veterinary tranquilizer which produces disassociation and hallucinations in humans. In some cases, the dealer has intentionally substituted a less expensive, more available illegal drug for another drug. In other cases, the substitution was made by a higher-level drug cartel or organization, and the dealer may in fact believe that the bogus product is MDMA or LSD.
caption: A tablet sold as MDMA. It contained no MDMA; instead, it contained benzylpiperazine (BZP), methamphetamine, and caffeine.
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