Drug War

Fear of Flakka

Anti-drug hysteria validates itself.


CBS News

Judging from the press coverage it has been receiving, flakka is the worst drug ever yet somehow also "the hot new drug of choice" in Florida. I explore that contradiction in my latest Forbes column:

If you have been paying attention to recent news reports about "the dangerous new drug sweeping Florida," you know at least two things about flakka: It gives you "superhuman strength," and you should nevertheless avoid it because it will turn you into a raving lunatic running naked through the streets, chased by invisible enemies, until you drop dead of hyperthermia or a heart attack.


The Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, which calls flakka "$5 insanity," quotes a drug treatment counselor who claims "longtime addicts who have tried flakka" are "terrified of it." In fact, he says, "This is as bad as it gets." Until the next drug scare, presumably.

Read the whole thing.

NEXT: Friday A/V Club: In a Parallel Universe, a Steakhouse Won the 1992 Election


  1. Jenkem!!

    1. Rainbow parties for all!

  2. Apparently “flakka” is alpha-Pyrrolidinopentiophenone. Wasn’t that hard to find out.

    It appears to be more or less the same sort of thing as “bath salts”. I guess “bath salts” isn’t scary enough anymore.

    1. No its completely different. See, it has a foreign sounding name which makes it much more powerful. Just like yoga vs stretching.

      1. A friend of mine says the word “marijuana” came into common usage because the powers that be wanted to scare white people by making it seem like it was something those untouchable brown people used. No idea if true, but sounds plausible, given the existence of Reefer Madness.

        1. I think it is largely true. As far as I know, it is a word that Mexicans used for it. But cannabis and hashish were better known terms among the American public and not particularly demonized.
          I’ve gotten this information from books with a definite anti-prohibition POV, so it may be more complicated than that.

  3. I bet it’s just a bad case of reefer madness. Y’know, that thing wot was going to enable the darkie dominion and make them think they were above their station in life.

    You’d think they’d update this old arsed playbook every century or so.

  4. I’ve never understood how people believe this hype. Obviously thousands of people have used this stuff, yet there have only been a couple isolated incidents of idiots taking the stuff and then acting like idiots. If it was as dangerous as the hype suggests, then there would be thousands of these incidents. But there isn’t. So why do people believe it?

    1. Because TV said so, and TV wouldn’t lie to them.

      1. You Won’t Believe What Was Living In This Woman’s Attic! Will Your Home Be Next?

        1. Boost Your Local News Station’s Flagging Ratings With This One Weird Trick

            1. To be fair, there are a LOT of facts that the networks hate.

    2. It’s especially weird when there is an obvious example of a very popular drug that regularly does lead to people acting that stupidly, namely alcohol. Now, I’m not one to poo-poo alcohol, but it’s hard to deny that it is near the top of the list for drugs that make people act like idiots and do ridiculous things. I’ve seen a lot of people on a lot of different drugs and alcohol is definitely associated with the most bizarre behavior.

  5. Where are our Floridians? We need someone to go out and try this stuff. For Science!

    1. *Paging Florida Man, Florida Man, pick up the Flakka Courtesy Phone*


    Sounds like you can watch the next Avengers movie… or live it.

  7. I can never understand the “superhuman strength” claims.

    It’s like saying that a drug will allow you to break the laws of thermodynamics, or the law of noncontradiction or something.

    “Adrenaline lets you lifts cars over your head!” has always been an urban legend. “PCP lets you tear through steel like a robot!” is the same.

    1. I hope you’re not implying that Dreyers would lie to me

    2. “Superhuman” is obviously not true. Pretty much by definition.

      But when your pain threshold is increased through use of drugs or a “fight or flight” response, you can do things you wouldn’t under normal conditions.

  8. Bring back kokodil!

    1. Hey, that reminds me.

      Whatever happened to “ice”?

      1. Is is just slang for methamphetamine, IIRC.

  9. They feed on fear. Your terror is delicious.

  10. Does this stuff cause mothers to fuck the horse-cocked boyfriends of their teenage daughters after an evening of nekkid Twister?

    1. No. Alcohol does that.

      1. Excuse me, IIRC, she blamed it on sex/porn addiction.

        1. I hear playing Twister turns otherwise respectable women into sex-hungry MILFs.

          1. Note to self: Schedule Twister before next LARPing weekend.

            1. Aren’t LARPers generally more sexually liberated than your average folks? The local LARP group in college was always a few bottles of mead away from group sex.

              1. I’m going to need more than a few to engage with this.

                1. It’s a known fact that group sex just works better with ugly people.


    BAN IT!! And by “it”, I mean this bullshit off-the-scale expression.

    1. Lieutenant in Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office = ORACLE OF TRUTH AND WISDOM

    2. Remember, on the law enforcement scale waterhomeopathic medicine is like a 7

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