Also this stuff is basically coffee except probably milder and less addictive.

I spent time in Djibouti (directly across the Red Sea), they consume massive amounts of khat, the whole "country" is addicted. In fact, because they don't grow it, the tiny African nation gets a planeload delivered each day. And you're wrong, it is significantly more stimulative than coffee. Go get some life experience before guessing about shit.

The alkaloid in question, beta keto amphetamine, suggests a stronger brew by name alone...

Here khitty khitty!

It's amphetamine related but caffiene is more potent than we give it credit. I'm sure this stuff could be processed into something more serious, but I suspect that the leaves are comparable to coca, which is about as mild as it gets. This stuff is legal almost everywhere in the world.

I've had the luck to have access to legal, commercially produced coca leaf tea a few times in my life and compared to normal tea with caffeine there's no comparison - the coca doesn't even come close, it's milder than ginseng.

Obviously I'm talking about three totally different, pharmacologically unrelated stimulants but i'd be shocked if chewing Khat leaves was as strong as a chemical extraction like brewed coffee.

Anyhow, it sounds like there's very little actual research on it* and the US ban is based on two factors: 1) one of its active ingredients is an amphetamine analog and is scheduled, and 2) it was cracked down on in New York because it was popular with Somali immigrants and the USA hates Somalis and immigrants.

Based on the political history of nearly every other drug prohibition in this country, I'm guessing that 2 was a much bigger factor than 1.




*There was a study that showed khat doesn't make rats horny.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/104366189580 0352

Ocyrus, you may be underestimating caffeine (which most of North America and Europe is addicted to and gets inconceivable amounts of imported daily).

Like I said, there's very little research out there but everything I'm finding sounds comparable to caffeine. We just pretend caffeine is a mild drug in European and North American societies because it's socially acceptable, but caffeine is pretty potent and pretty addictive.

I suppose if you had a really potent strain of khat it could be pretty strong, and synthesized or chemically extracted cathinone is probably nothing to mess around with (although whether it can kill you like chemically extracted or synthesized caffeine can, I have no idea).


Anyway, I'm not saying khat doesn't have potential for addiction an abuse, I'm saying it's pretty hypocritical of the USA to ban it when our culture's comparable stimulant of choice remains legal.

Also not everyone can afford to travel overseas for extended periods to "get life experience" so that our uninformed opinions are more valid than another person's uninformed opinions, Uncle Pennybags.

Also, you know, the fact that we've been prescribing amphetamine (Ritalin is pharmacologically identical to amphetamine, one molecule was moved on a ring so hat it could be patented under a different name for PR reasons back around the early 60s) and yet the analog present in khat is Schedule I and doesn't legally have any accepted medical use.

Can't speak to he relative addiction potential, but this study comparing caffiene with amphetamine (which is about as close to cathinone, the primary stimulant in khat, as we're likely to find any data on at all) in treatment of cocaine dependent subjects has some pretty interesting data that's relevant here if you look at the non-dependent control group results only, and compare effects across the different substances (placebo, 150mg caffeine, 300mg caffeine, and amphetamine):

http://pubmedcentralcanada.ca/pmcc/articles/PMC4235768/

Slow down, man. You've been chewing on the khitty, haven't you?

Say, we need to score some of this shit to test it ourselves. Is it really illegal in the US? I suppose so, amphetamines and their analogs are definitely scheduled. Speed's not my thing, but a little poison now and then... as Nietzsche said.

But yeah, I am also of the opinion that caffeine is a powerfully addictive drug, withdrawal from serious use is physical agony. We do toss the stuff around like it was candy, but then all stimulants were treated like this until fairly recently.

It's odd, OZ. I lived on the Andean altiplano a good long time and I'd consider coca leaf tea significantly stronger than most teas and Argentine/Uruguayan yerba maté, Also: much more acrid. It makes me much less jittery than coffee, which can make me aggressive and fighty if I have too much. Maté gives me a can-do energy burst without any of the negative effects. But maybe this stuff hits everyone differently.

I've never chewed coca or tried khat, though.

I get a major headache if I don't have coffee everyday so yeah caffeine is a hell of a drug, and also you can purchase seeds of this plant off of eBay, I might be trying my hands at horticulture here soon