According to Semi-Narcotic Khat Now a Kenya Cash Crop, the “narcotic” (really a stimulant) has finally spread beyond Africa and the Middle East:
Kenyans first began exporting khat to Europe in the late 1970s, but the trade was a relatively small-time affair until about a decade ago.Since then, exports have grown more than 50 percent, says Leandro Bariu, chairman of Nyambene Miraa Trade Association, the country’s largest khat industry group.
These days, khat exports bring in about $250 million a year, making the leaf one of the country’s largest foreign exchange earners, Bariu says.
Most of the 150 tons of khat exported a week from Kenya goes to Somalia and to European countries like Britain and the Netherlands, where khat is legal and large populations of Yemeni, Somali and Kenyan immigrants eagerly await their daily shipments.
Most Americans know khat as the drug that the Somalian gunmen from Blackhawk Down chewed. The University of Pennsylvania has an Everything About Khat page:
Khat contains cathine (d-norisoephedrine), cathidine, and cathinine. Cathine is also one of the alkaloids found in Ephedra vulgaris. It is fortunate, perhaps, that khat is also very rich in ascorbic acid which is an excellent antidote to amphetamine-type compounds.In animals, khat produces excitation and increased motor activity. In humans, it is a stimulant producing a feeling of exaltation, a feeling of being liberated from space and time. It may produce extreme loquacity, inane laughing, and eventually semicoma. It may also be an euphorient and used chronically can lead to a form of delirium tremens. Galkin and Mironychev (1964) reported that up to 80% of the adult population of Yemen use khat. Upon first chewing khat, the initial effects were unpleasant and included dizziness, lassitude, tachycardia, and sometimes epigastric pain. Gradually more pleasant feelings replaced these inaugural symptoms. The subjects had feelings of bliss, clarity of thought, and became euphoric and overly energetic. Sometimes khat produced depression, sleepiness, and then deep sleep. The chronic user tended to be euphoric continually. In rare cases the subjects became aggressive and overexcited.
If khat weren’t already illegal in the US, I’d expect to find it in new ephedra-free Ripped Fuel.