Labubus are now entering night-clubs
If you’re around social media quite often or have kids who do, you’ve likely come across a fuzzy creature with a whole lot of teeth. Some claim them to be strange creatures, others find them incredibly cute, and some decided that their name was a word game between the Pazuzu demon mentioned in the 70’s horror movie The Exorcist. We are talking about Labubu.
The trend hit us a little bit before the Summer of this year, and if you’re not aware of what they are, let me tell you, they were as popular as Furby’s back in the 90s, and just like Furby’s, plenty of speculation regarding the safety of these dolls found on various teenager and young adult bags hung by a keychain, or even a few designer brands, people started believing that the doll could have a link to the demon Pazuzu or even that the trendy monsters were pre-equiped with spy equipment once shipped from China, but this isn’t what we are here for. Believe it or not, this nine-toothed fuzzy creature has a link to psychedelics.
Trends keep evolving, and the clandestine pill pressers tend to try to keep up with them. We saw it with the Tesla MDMA pills pressed in the Netherlands, the Louis Vuitton 2C-B pills found in Spain.
Labubus are no different. This year, the Thai Narcotics Control Board issued a warning about Labubu-shaped pills entering parties over the Songkran festival in the capital. Once analyzed, the sample showed not just a high percentage of MDMA, but a significant mixture of Ketamine and Diazepam.
According to toxicologists, this mix can be overwhelming to the nervous system, resulting in a spike in neurological activity, followed by a total shutdown.
But as always, our aim is not to cause the panic spread by the media, but instead to understand the pharmacological phenomenons and raise awareness of the situation, and one thing that I found interesting throughout this story was how people were so quick to make such shapes of pills, given the trend was so sudden and unexpected.
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Note: The following content is educational and made for people to understand and identify various pill forms for harm reduction purposes
When analyzing the shapes of most products, we observe that they generally follow a specific pattern. The shapes include squares, circles, pentagons, and hexagons, but they rarely have more complex designs. However, Labubu shapes are distinct from what we typically see in other pills roaming around. To understand how people press different-shaped powders, I decided to learn a bit more about machinery (more specifically, CNC cutters), and you’ll get to see why.
When talking about powder forms, just like the PEZ candy, or even bathbombs the only typical process (or at least to cut expenses) would be to find how PEZ makers press their candy using a manual press (of course, in an industrial scale, the companies must have automatic presses, but the manual presses would work as efficiently). Typically, these presses look almost like a clean slate with a slot in the middle, so when you scoop the powder through the slot, the powder falls through, and you will obtain the shape you want once you press it.
To achieve unique shapes, I theorize that using a CNC cutter to cut the desired design into a metal slab, would allow us to compress the PEZ powder. To achieve the desired shape on the back-end, we would also require a customized puncher, since the CNC cutter will only provide the frontal shape. To customize the puncher, you may also use the CNC machine or a 3d printer.
Why is this important to know?
Knowing the processes behind compressing candy, or even pharmaceutical compounds, may seem like a fun fact that we decided to theorize upon. However, there can be some real knowledge when it comes to observing design and shapes!
With the popularization of psychedelics to the general community, it’s safe to say that we all know about compounds sold as something they are not. It can involve irregular dosages, adulterated compounds, and cross-contamination of mixed or unknown substances in a single pill. Especially in the world of party drugs, including MDMA, it’s usual for us to see high dosages in MDMA tablets all across Europe, with dosages ranging from 150 mg to 300 mg (whereas common dosages range from 70mg to 140mg). But at the same time, we may also find, for example, 2C-B pills crossed with MDMA in the Zelda Moon Face pill reported by the German free app Know Drugs APP.
Remembering that the designer chose the Zelda Moon Face logo, the SoundCloud logo (another design reportedly representing a substance containing 245 mg of MDMA in Spain), or even the Labubu Shaped pills helps us identify a concerning pattern. Often, these appealing, trendy, or distinctive designs are associated with adulterated substances or compounds linked to overdoses and negative experiences. The Labubu trend is another example of this phenomenon. This alone raises an important issue: the fact that these alluring shapes may attract children or teenagers to try these substances simply because of their fun designs, despite a lack of education on the risks and dangers involved.
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What can you do to minimize these issues?
While it’s impossible to erase adulterated compounds from Earth, or even stop people from taking them, the best we can do is to raise awareness for platforms such as ourselves to become educated about these compounds, but also platforms such as Know Drugs to be aware of the compounds that are currently roaming around your area. And most importantly, raise awareness of testing your compounds, even though we trust our friends who gave us X compound, or the fact that the person you got it from has been reliable every time.
We believe that testing these compounds can save lives. You can learn more about testing here here.
Currently, the Labubu pills are still circulating. For this reason, we once again ask you to test your compounds and remain vigilant about the unique pill-shaped compounds that are out there.
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