Perhaps it is because my teenage years lie somewhere over a far-away hill, but I had not heard of mephedrone until a year ago.
That was when a respondent to a blog I had posted about the dangers of ingesting ketamine wrote: "We are about to see a lot of young people being killed by new designer drugs, like methadrone (sic)."
How prescient were those words, given the deaths on Monday of two teenagers from Scunthorpe, apparently after taking mephedrone.
What we are learning is that, whenever a drug - cannabis, ecstasy or whatever - is classified, another one soon appears on the market that gives the user a high; but, unlike the others, its illegality cannot be questioned.
Until, of course, that one joins the list of proscribed substances. And so the cycle continues as it inevitably will if the government bans mephedrone, as reported this week.
DrugScope chief executive Martin Barnes told BBC News that mephedrone use was primarily a public health issue. Banning the drug created an illegal market and there were signs that it was already being stockpiled with a consequent rise in price, he said.
Others blame the government's sacking in October of the government's drugs adviser Prof David Nutt. The Liberal Democrats' home affairs spokesperson, Chris Huhne, said: "If the home secretary hadn't meddled in the work of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, we would already have had their advice and the government would be able to act."
Political capital? Perhaps. But it was Barnes's call to improve education about the drug among young people that sounded the more convincing.
It was something supported by the brother of one of the teenagers who died. Matt Smith said of Nicholas: "If he thought he was taking something illegal, that he shouldn't be taking, he wouldn't have taken it."
That could be seen as a case for banning the drug. But it also shows that the mantra, "education, education, education", is more than about maths, English and science.
I think it's important that people are presented with facts and not just horror stories. There's an interesting article on mephedrone here - http://bit.ly/cEqUWK