A 30-year old resident of the town of Ofakim stormed into a police station on Friday and assaulted an officer with a sharpened stick, stabbing the man in his stomach.
The other officers present attempted to arrest him, at this point the man pulled out a large knife and attempted to stab them as well. He was quickly subdued, when the officers searched him they found he was carrying a drug sold under the brand name ‘Nice Guy.’
Nice Guy is a designer drug that had been made illegal in Israel.
Designer drugs are designed to mimic the effects of illegal drugs using chemical variations that technically make them into a different substance, and ergo legal.
Nice Guy is sold in 24-hour convenient stores, usually by young people, who purchase the drug with strong alcohol to be consumed before a night of dancing or partying.
Nice Guy is made from a chemical variant of Meth, meaning it functions as a stimulant. The substance is highly addictive and as it is targeted at youth and sold in normative stores, is seen as dangerous. Nice Guy is not the only drug Israelis often mistake for a permissible recreational substance, Khat, which is a stimulant containing the alkaloid cathinone, is also used by some in the Yemeni Jewish community. On Thursday, it was reported that dozens of Israelis were arrested outside the country for smuggling it.