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Send ‘Ludes—This Week On VICE: Members Only

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17.07.2026

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Send ‘Ludes—This Week On VICE: Members Only

This week behind the paywall, a drug that hasn’t been in circulation for decades returns, and a violent new Pokémon card crime wave emerges.

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To get past the paywall, sign up for VICE membership. A Digital Only subscription is just $2 a month (or $20 a year, if you prefer), while $70 a year also gets you 4 issues of VICE magazine, delivered straight to your door. (All three kill all the ads on this site.)

Historically speaking, government-led efforts to clamp down on recreational drugs of any kind have been a colossal failure. I’m writing this from London, UK, where mephedrone burps fill the night air and cocaine pollution in the water system is so significant it’s altering the behavior of salmon. I’m sure if we test it again at the end of the month, after the World Cup, we’ll find them manically propelling themselves all the way to Svalbard, like the underwater answer to Super Hans accidentally running to Windsor. It’s much the same in the States.

However, there’s one drug that bucks all prohibitory trends: methaqualone, aka Quaaludes. 

Decades ago, methaqualone was embraced by the counterculture as a lovey-dovey disco drug, before........

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