What is 3-MMC, this booming designer drug?


The drug 3-methylmethcathinone, commonly known as 3-MMC, is a synthetic cathinone that is causing a lot of concern across Europe. She has returned to the news lately, with the Pierre Palmade affair. The actor would have received in the form of eight injections before his car accident in early February, which seriously injured three people including a pregnant woman who lost her baby. Europe 1 takes stock of this drug.

Cathinones are a family of synthetic substances derived from natural cathinone (one of the active principles of khat). They more or less mimic the effects of cocaine, MDMA, ecstasy and amphetamines. In total, there are more than fifty, and the best known are mephedrone, 4-MEC, 3-MMC, MDPV, and alpha-PVP.

Officially considered a drug

Entering into force in August 2022, a directive from the European Commission has just included 3-MMC and 3-CMC, another synthetic cathinone, in its definition of the term “drug”. The few countries in the European Union where these substances are still legal had until February 2023 to ban them. Since 2011, 55 laboratories manufacturing synthetic cathinones have also been dismantled on European soil, including “nearly half between 2019 and 2021”.

According to Agence France Presse, the consumption of 3-MMC has often been observed since the beginning of the 2010s, almost exclusively among men who have sex with other men in contexts mixing sexuality, most often in groups, and consumption of synthetic psychoactive products such as chemsex. This product can be in the form of powder, crystal but also tablets. In powder form, it is sold for 30 euros per gram on average, against 60 for cocaine.

It is “ingested, snorted or consumed rectally”, reports the French Observatory of Drugs and Drug Addiction (OFDT). “Injecting is also reported in high-risk contexts, such as ‘chemsex’ parties,” adds the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction. The product aims to remove inhibitions, increase pleasure.

A drug that is becoming more democratic

Since 2017, consumption not associated with sexual relations has been reported occasionally during festive evenings within the LGBTQ+ community, first in Paris, Lyon and Bordeaux and then in Marseille. They are the work of homosexual or heterosexual people (men and women). “I’ve seen two or three girls buy 3-MMC to go to a party, […] straight, festive people. […] There is a porosity that is made from us in fact. I have my straight friends who know, who will take it if we have it”, reports a man interviewed by the OFDT.

Jean-Pierre Couteron, addictologist and psychotherapist, saw users arriving in consultation who had “lost control”. “There is a fashion effect and availability, it is undeniable”, poses Jean-Pierre Couteron, who consults at the Center for care, support and prevention in addictology (CSAPA) Trait d’Union Oppelia de Boulogne- Billancourt.



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