Chinese labs already working on the next 'meow meow'

Young, rich and brimming with energy, Eric embodies the entrepreneurial spirit of modern China. He sits at his desk beneath a cabinet of spirits and cigars that he dispenses liberally to his overseas clients while secretaries totter in and out carrying samples and price lists.

Eric, 35, wears designer clothes, drives a Buick SUV and works such long hours his wife moans that he treats the luxury villa where they live like a hotel. But for all his infectious charm as he chats and jokes at his office in an up-market Shanghai apartment block, there is a sinister side to the business that has made this chemistry graduate conspicuously wealthy.

The booming and rapidly expanding company he heads produces designer drugs that supply tens of thousands of British youngsters with a legal - and potentially lethal - high. These new drugs could take over as a legal replacement for mephedrone, the amphetamine-like drug some users have called 'meow meow', which was banned by the Government ten days ago after legislation was rushed through. This followed media reports that cited its use by some users before their deaths. One of those was Lois Waters, 24, of North Yorkshire who died last month having taken mephedrone several days before.

With a laboratory near the city's international airport (whose neighbours include offices of Glaxo Smith Kline, Novartis and Astra Zeneca) and a factory with 65 workers three hours from Shanghai, Eric claims his company manufactures and ships hundreds of kilograms of drugs to Britain every week.

Despite the ban on mephedrone and other related-compounds, Eric and many other Chinese businessmen like him are ahead of the game. They beat customs controls using know-how and corruption and are creating and preparing new drugs that will deliberately dodge our classifications and continue to offer profitable, legal kicks in the UK.