Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The main thing about Phenylacetone meth is that there's so much of it

dynomight.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 371 posts

Re: The main thing about Phenylacetone meth is that there's so much of it

#221

Post by jkhdigital »

kortex wrote: post #108
kens wrote: post #64

The article mentions the ban in 2006 of over-the-counter sales of Sudafed (pseudoephedrine). One of my favorite satirical articles is "A simple and convenient synthesis of pseudoephedrine from N-methylamphetamine". (The joke being that Sudafed is now hard to purchase while meth is readily available.) https://www.improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume19/v19i3...

The ironic thing is the sheer drop in price is probably due in part to the P2P route taking over. It's a more involved process than Sudafed meth, but it's easier to scale, since you aren't bottlenecked by the pharmaceutical supply. Once you establish the facility and pipeline, you can crank out industrial amounts of crank. The precursors are cheap and used in huge quantities by legitimate labs.

As dramatized in the television series Breaking Bad

Re: The main thing about Phenylacetone meth is that there's so much of it

#222

Post by m0zg »

perardi wrote: post #130

Bit of a tangential rant: meth is actually truly really bad, and I wish our drug education growing up hadn’t painted this nebulous concept of “drugs”, because there’s gradations of harm. I’m approaching 40. (Ugh, I hate to admit that.) I grew up during the D.A.R.E. era. Just Say No. Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue. “Drugs” were this boogeyman, and whatever they were, they would turn you into a junkie instantly. I hav…

> with the exception of meth and opiates

That's like saying "I did a lot of drugs, except the ones that _really_ fuck you up". 100K people will die in the US this year from hard drug overdoses. 93K died last year. This also ignores the fact that several times the number are circling down the societal shitter due to their addiction.

That's not to disagree that e.g. MJ is less dangerous than alcohol when consumed in moderation (although it doesn't have the same effect, so realistically people will just consume both, hopefully not simultaneously).

But don't forget the audience: there's a number of folks on this site who think that heroin and meth should be legal, and freely available, and they will read your comment with that bias in mind. I'd much rather have the old DARE bullshit than allow this to happen.

Re: The main thing about Phenylacetone meth is that there's so much of it

#223

Post by jkhdigital »

howlin wrote: post #211
daveguy wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. That requires another specific decision to commit a crime. Respiratory viral infection requires no additional decision on part of the viral vector. I agree there shouldn't be a blanket decriminalization of drug use because it does alter judgement/motivation and make a theft or even violent crime more likely.

Drugs destroy your ability to make good decisions. They are essentially hot wiring the brain's reward circuits which directly feed back into the brain's decision making processes. Most obviously, it's almost never the case that addicts consciously choose to become addicted.

Does anyone 100% consciously choose anything? If you make a decision after drinking a strong cup of coffee, how much of that decision came from the caffeine, and how much came from your “consciousness”?

I’m not necessarily disagreeing with you—addiction is a disease of forces and circumstances, for sure—but the level of “free will” present in any choice (or sequence of choices) is a certainly not amenable to a binary classification.

Re: The main thing about Phenylacetone meth is that there's so much of it

#224

Post by mod »

wayoutthere wrote: post #115
dcolkitt wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much of the effects of any intoxicant are culturally constructed. Alcohol is widely known for causing aggression, but this effect doesn’t seem to exist in cultures without that association. Nor does it exist in double-blind studies, yet the placebo group becomes more aggressive. You can start with two chemically identical intoxicants, and either by marketing or random path dependencies one gains a reputation in the s…

> Look at the moral panic over Four Loko. The same cocktail of ethanol and caffeine has been consumed as amaro and coffee by rich women since time immemorial. Yet it never caused moral panic until the “wrong type of people” started consuming it. You’re not entirely wrong, but a splash of liqueur into a small cup of coffee is pretty different from dissolving caffeine pills in tall boys of malt liquor.

Substitute "PBR hard coffee," then.

Malt liquor drink, 30mg caffeine. Tastes like Yoo-hoo.

Re: The main thing about Phenylacetone meth is that there's so much of it

#225

Post by ehnto »

i_am_proteus wrote: post #201
daveguy wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, to be fair. Your drug use can't put me in the ICU.

Not directly, but addicted people sometimes turn to violent crime to raise funds, and that violent crime certainly can put you in the ICU.

Meth is definitely one of the drugs that becomes a public nuisance, since people do become erratic and violent while using. Meth users are the only people that worry me when walking through our city since it can make people who are already unstable become unpredictably violent. I wonder if other drugs were legal would people still do meth?

Re: The main thing about Phenylacetone meth is that there's so much of it

#226

Post by jkhdigital »

wirrbel wrote: post #98
Zarathust wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Canada you can still buy that over the counter. You get id-ed and they keep a record of your purchases, but since it's now generic pills it is now much cheaper than it was before

I grew up in Germany in a household that never used nasal decongestants, probably out of some fear that they might be dangerous. When in Canada a doctor told me to buy some pseudoephedrine pills to treat a clotted ear and I found the experience so nice, that when back in Germany I walked into a pharmacy to get some. The looks...

Japan is similarly puritanical about stimulants. Might have something to do with the way those drugs were used in those countries during the war…

Re: The main thing about Phenylacetone meth is that there's so much of it

#227

Post by xyzzyz »

kurthr wrote: post #218
daveguy wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, to be fair. Your drug use can't put me in the ICU.

Yeah, it's not about you... it's the other people you may infect and kill. Kids are mostly fine... if only they didn't have teachers or parents.

Teachers and parents can get vaccinated themselves, no? I thought the vaccine works, doesn’t it?

Re: The main thing about Phenylacetone meth is that there's so much of it

#228

Post by snek_case »

ceejayoz wrote: post #86
Zarathust wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Canada you can still buy that over the counter. You get id-ed and they keep a record of your purchases, but since it's now generic pills it is now much cheaper than it was before

It's the same in the US; you can buy it without a prescription, but you have to have your ID logged.

That really surprised me once. I was traveling in the states and wanted to buy pseudoephedrine, and the guy asked me for my id, asked me to sign a log book, and then proceeded to unlock a giant safe behind him.

Re: The main thing about Phenylacetone meth is that there's so much of it

#229

Post by xyzzyz »

ehnto wrote: post #225
i_am_proteus wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not directly, but addicted people sometimes turn to violent crime to raise funds, and that violent crime certainly can put you in the ICU.

Meth is definitely one of the drugs that becomes a public nuisance, since people do become erratic and violent while using. Meth users are the only people that worry me when walking through our city since it can make people who are already unstable become unpredictably violent. I wonder if other drugs were legal would people still do meth?

Other drugs already are legal. Alcohol is legal, and marijuana is effectively legal in Seattle, where people apparently do a lot of meth.

Re: The main thing about Phenylacetone meth is that there's so much of it

#230

Post by version_five »

wirrbel wrote: post #106
tyingq wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that the gin->mean, whisky->emotional, etc, is all bunk. But I'm still convinced there's a link between alcohol and violence. If nothing else, the lowered cognitive function and reduced inhibition would mean more opportunity to be angry, and less self control. Like, a drunk person might misinterpret someone accidentally bumping into them as aggression. And would be less likely to suppress the urge to respond…

Reduced inhibition does not support the thesis of increased agression, unless you define aggression to refer to "aggression shown". But I'd overall turn the 'cultural' aspect a little further even. I think I have observed a couple of times people to consume alcohol in order to be able to transgress cultural norms because the cultural norms themselves are 'parametrised' for the sober-drunk states. I.e. get into a figh…

Where in canada were you? I've lived here my whole life and never experienced anything like this. And I've been to Germany, out drinking with Germans, a handful of times and never felt any material difference in demeanor between partying with those folks and with canadians.
Post reply on HN