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 being swiftly outlawed by the U.S. government in the 1970s and vanishing from the market. “We eliminated the problem,” former DEA chief Gene Haislip said at the time. “We beat them.” Now, Quaaludes are making a comeback for the first time in decades. VICE’s Mattha Busby penetrated exclusive psychonaut circles, where they’re mainly being used:

“I read the labels on the serrated bags. ‘Lemmon-714 (methaqualone),’ they said. I was familiar enough with the lore of the drug to know that these were the version infamously taken by stockbroker Jordan Belfort in the early 90s, and subsequently immortalized in The Wolf of Wall Street. Smaller print stated that each tablet contained 300mg of methaqualone. The pharmaceutical-style sticker cautioned: ‘Fedearal law prohibits dispersing without perscription.’ The spelling mistakes were far from reassuring, but what struck me was the ancient expiry date: January 1981, a full 13 years before I was born. ‘It’s an homage,’ said Jamie. 

“I had at my fingertips roughly 300 pills of an extremely potent sedative that hasn’t meaningfully been in circulation for decades…”

Read the full story below to learn more about the stealth return of Quaaludes in 2026, and the likelihood of you casually being offered one in a club toilet anytime soon:

There’s something rotten in the state of Pokémon. In the forthcoming summer issue of VICE magazine, you will find a story about Pokémon cosplayers arming themselves with pepper spray, pocket knives, and stun guns to attend conventions because of the prevalence of sexual assault and harassment in the community. Now, it seems high value Pokémon card traders are following suit, tooling up in self-defense in response to a violent crime wave that has hit the card trading market. Reports of brazen armed robberies are becoming more frequent across the U.S., with traders being pepper sprayed and beaten with baseball bats in broad daylight. The attacks have been so bad there’s even two teenagers facing felony charges in Durham, North Carolina. Edwin O’Connell reports:

“As with everything, where there’s money, there’s crime—but for Pokémon cards, probably a lot more crime than you’d expect. The cards themselves are the perfect targets for theft, scams, scalping, and even money laundering. Light and easy to carry, inconspicuous, extremely liquid, essentially untraceable, and regularly bought and sold with cash, a stolen collection can be fenced to a buyer at 60-80+ percent of market price, no questions asked. Pricier cards can be purchased with dirty money and taken around the world, where again they can be sold for straight cash in almost every major city on earth, avoiding banks, the tax man, and customs.”

Read the full, strange story below:

Emma Garland
Deputy Editor, VICE Magazine

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.)