4-FA was a “street drug” many years ago – it has been a class A substance in the UK since 1977. That said I am fairly sure my Dad managed to get hold of some in the late 70s/early 80s as my mum described him having taken a substance with similar effects to MDMA long before pills ever appeared in this country.
He had a number of odd hippy friends siome of whom my mum disapproved of but could obtain such subtances, as he always worked with science/engineering based companies and was not known to the feds for much else. That said they were sound enough. I remember some dude with a beard in abour 1978 turning up at our family business, waving around a copy of the New Scientist which had an article about computers (that he later gave me to read – this kept me occupied for about 3 months) and telling Dad “teach your son about these computers, soon they will be everywhere”. Also other older folk of his generation I have met here particularly those what worked (or still work) for the Post Office and British Telecom have also hinted that stimulant and psychedelic use was not uncommon amongst middle class professional folk of that era, however they were extremely careful not to get caught or let it affect their work as it could result in much harsher penalties including being permanently blacklisted from many jobs and/or being sectioned
Bear in mind though that the Post Office provided all the communications links used by the cops so it wasn’t exactly difficult to work out where drugs squad might be operating 😉 – also drug use back then was less regular and more “self disciplined” than today. there is a reason why a certain generation of computer professionals all have long beards, love progressive rock (and often also psy trance) and have bizzare fashion tastes..
As for naphyrone, around the time it was appearing there was a “undercover report” (i.e a stitch up) that Sky did on a Chinese lab (basically they filmed it and dobbed it into the Chinese feds) and a scientist type chap there (who may have been speaking Chinese and subtitled for most of the film) says in accented but otherwise reasonable English.
“no. you not want that. it too strong, put many people in hospital”.
