The city’s psychiatrists are flooded with cases of Mephedrone addiction – Mephedrone is a new, cheaper drug doing the rounds for the last one year and is commonly known as ‘meow meow’ or M-Cat drug – and doctors are saying that the number of people addicted to this synthetic drug has increased so rapidly that the city is facing a “Mephedrone epidemic”.Psychiatrist Dr Harish Shetty said that he has been getting three to six cases of M-Cat addict every day since last six months. “Such high number of cases daily is extremely unusual. This simply tells about the easy availability of the drug and the rapidly multiplying number of users,” said Shetty, adding that his most recent cases have been a teenaged girl who went missing from home for two days while on a high, and a senior excise officer who is unable to give up the addiction.Doctors estimate that there are 30,000 M-Cat users in Mumbai already and a majority of them are in the age group of 14 to 19 years. At a cost of merely Rs 150 per gram, M-Cat is a highly affordable drug. “Youngsters can afford a few doses of drug every day by simply skipping a snack, because peddlers sell it for as cheap as Rs 15 per dose,” said Dr Yusuf Merchant, president of Fort-based Drug Abuse Information Rehabilitation and Research Centre.Merchant has filed public interest litigation (PIL) in the Bombay High Court on December 23 to include the drug under the Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act. “Mephedrone is basically a plant fertiliser that is being abused. Since it is not under the NDPS Act, it is promoted openly as a plant fertiliser on the internet,” Merchant, who had written to police and the Home Ministry, said. “What heroin does to a person in 10 years, M-Cat does in a year,” Merchant said, adding he has seen 11 cases of the drug addiction in the last one week.One of them, a 14–year-old boy from a south Mumbai school, is currently in the rehabilitation centre. He consumed 50 grams of M-Cat and was awake for seven consecutive days. “It was like a stimulant for my brain. I could not function without sniffing the powder,” said the boy, who stole from his sister and parents to buy the drug. Another case pertains to a 17-year-old girl, who lost 15 kilos in the last nine months by abusing the drug. “My eyes were bloodshot and I had become extremely irritable and then I wanted to do the drug again and again,” she said.In September, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) declared Mephedrone a harmful substance.Chief minister Devendra Fadnavis too has approached the Centre to add the drug under the NDPS Act.“The drug’s penetration is mainly in the school and this is extremely worrying. Most children are getting introduced to the drug through friends,” said a school counsellor in the western suburbs who has directed five children to psychiatrists in the last 10 days.Psychiatrists Dr Yusuf Matcheswalla, who practices at Masina, G T and J J hospitals, said he gets at least 15 new M-Cat cases every day in the out-patient department (OPD). “No drug has spread this rapidly,” Matcheswalla said.