Even as cops crack down on cocaine, African drug peddlers have figured out yet another way to outsmart the police using simple chemistry, a la Breaking Bad. They are now brewing chemical drugs — mephedrone (MD) — in their apartments at Navi Mumbai and Mira Road.

This is the first time African peddlers in the city have ventured out of the cocaine business and into synthetic drugs like MD. Anti-narcotic cell (ANC) officers first caught wind of this shift in July-end, when they arrested nine African origin peddlers at the Eastern Freeway. The peddlers had 104 g of cocaine, but the police were more concerned by the smaller package of 9 g of MD they found.