Designer drug 3-MMC overdoses nearly doubled last year, despite ban

The number of overdoses with the designer drug 3-MMC nearly doubled to 202 cases last year, the National Poisons Information Center (NVIC), part of UMC Utrecht, said in its annual report. Its experts are concerned because the Netherlands banned the drug in 2021. That should have led to a decrease in overdoses, not such a massive increase.

“In the past, you often saw that the banning of a popular drug led to a decline in use,” said NVIC toxicologist Dylan de Lange. That 3-MMC use and the number of overdoses increased so much is “very worrying,” he said. “Because it is an illegal substance that you should not actually use, and users can develop serious health problems from it.”

Symptoms of a 3-MMC overdose include high blood pressure, higher heart rate, and rising body temperature. “And that can have all kinds of nasty consequences,” De Lange said.

Emergency physician Femke Gresnigt from the OLVG in Amsterdam has seen patients suffer dire consequences from the drug, which is also called “miaow” or “poes,” Dutch for “cat,” in the Netherlands. “For example, we had a man in his twenties with a heart attack and an older patient who even had to be resuscitated,” she said to RTL Nieuws.

3-MMC has a similar effect as ecstasy but is addictive and can cause serious health problems. The designer drug is especially popular among the young nightlife crowd between the ages of 16 and 35 years. Last year, 33.7 percent of this group used the drug.

According to Lieselotte Beekman of the addiction care institute Tactus, many young people consider 3-MMC a cheaper alternative to cocaine. But she warned that the drug is very addictive. “There are now many teenagers and twenty-somethings who come to us because of an addiction. It is really a big problem,” she told the broadcaster.

The NVIC also reported an increase in overdoses from the recreational use of ketamine, which has hallucinogenic and dissociative properties. Last year, there were over 300 cases of people suffering health problems after using ketamine recreationally.

The institute also received reports of over 14,000 overdoses involving benzodiazepines or designer variants of the sedatives. “What is striking here is the increase in the number of calls about designer and unregistered benzodiazepines,” the NVIC said. Last year, 226 overdoses were reported, up from 195 in 2022 and 168 in 2021. “This often involved bromazolam and pyrazolam.”