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The main thing about P2P meth is that there's so much of it (2021)

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Re: The main thing about P2P meth is that there's so much of it (2021)

#31

Post by Aurornis »

keepamovin wrote: post #10

The ephedrine (or pseudoephedrine) synthesis is a one step using phosphorus/iodine reduction directly to methamphetamine. It’s simple and clean in that only an acid base extraction is required, and only one set of NP solvents. All these others syntheses with multiple steps up the chances of weird toxic solvents or contaminants creeping in. I think it’s a contaminant issue that’s exacerbated by the drug use. The gover…

> The government should just regulate it, control purity and production and let people access small amounts for recreation/performance.

The phrase “small amount” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in this statement.

The government does regulate and control amphetamine and methamphetamine (Desoxyn) as prescription drugs. The former is not all that hard to access. For a while it was as easy as signing up for a service through a TikTok ad and filling out a form, after which you were guaranteed a prescription. Those mills got shut down but it’s not hard to find a doctor willing to write a prescription in your area with some Internet searching (Side note: Lot of people get surprised when they get a prescription from some random doctor and discover that all of their other doctors know about it. Controlled substance prescriptions go to shared databases and it will be on that record for a while)

> It’s not an evil drug per se - long history before it was criminalized

Dose makes the poison, the recreational users aren’t going to be satisfied with your government regulated small amounts.

These discussions always end up with two parties talking past each other because one side wants to focus only on the ideal drug user who uses small amounts and has perfect education and self control, while ignoring that the meth users wouldn’t be stopped from seeking their larger quantities than a theoretical government regulated small amount program would allow.

I should also mention that methamphetamine appears to be quite neurotoxic at recreational doses. Maybe even smaller doses too.

We should also mention that the “long history” you speak of isn’t actually that long and was associated with small epidemics of overuse and addiction, too. It’s not like addiction is a modern phenomenon.

Re: The main thing about P2P meth is that there's so much of it (2021)

#32

Post by throwaway27448 »

Aurornis wrote: post #31
keepamovin wrote: post #10

The ephedrine (or pseudoephedrine) synthesis is a one step using phosphorus/iodine reduction directly to methamphetamine. It’s simple and clean in that only an acid base extraction is required, and only one set of NP solvents. All these others syntheses with multiple steps up the chances of weird toxic solvents or contaminants creeping in. I think it’s a contaminant issue that’s exacerbated by the drug use. The gover…

> The government should just regulate it, control purity and production and let people access small amounts for recreation/performance. The phrase “small amount” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in this statement. The government does regulate and control amphetamine and methamphetamine (Desoxyn) as prescription drugs. The former is not all that hard to access. For a while it was as easy as signing up for a service thr…

Having to go through the medical system is why there's such a thriving black market. How do you propose changing things that this isn't the case?

Re: The main thing about P2P meth is that there's so much of it (2021)

#33

Post by [deleted] »

zephen wrote: post #29

The article was doing so well until the conclusion. > Does this rule out the idea of contaminants? No. Even if it’s 97% pure d-meth, there could be something very nasty lurking in that last 3%. But I don’t see the need for such an explanation. We know there are many more heavy users, so there’s no need to go beyond the idea that quantity has a quality all its own. It's fine if the author finds it an uninteresting pro…

[deleted]

Re: The main thing about P2P meth is that there's so much of it (2021)

#34

Post by hash872 »

keepamovin wrote: post #10

The ephedrine (or pseudoephedrine) synthesis is a one step using phosphorus/iodine reduction directly to methamphetamine. It’s simple and clean in that only an acid base extraction is required, and only one set of NP solvents. All these others syntheses with multiple steps up the chances of weird toxic solvents or contaminants creeping in. I think it’s a contaminant issue that’s exacerbated by the drug use. The gover…

>The government should just regulate it, control purity and production and let people access small amounts for recreation/performance

Famously, the US spent about 15-20 years attempting this with opioids. They were widely available to people via a pseudo-medical process, or via secondhand dealing. Opioids were/are manufactured by regulated, publicly traded companies with inspectors who controlled purity and production. The result? A shattering drug addiction crisis that at its height killed more people annually than the entire Vietnam War.

(For people saying 'no, that was illegal heroin or fentanyl that did all that damage'- the Wiki page for the opioid crisis is quite clear that at least 50% of all deaths were due to perfectly legal, regulated opioids).

When you make drugs legal & easy to get, lots & lots of people do them- who develop life-shattering addictions and OD en masse. They also build tolerance and then move on to even harder stuff. AFAIK out of the 300ish countries on the globe, there is not 1 that has decriminalized hard drugs in the modern era. And no don't say Portugal, contrary to widespread myth they forced people under threat of jail to attend drug rehab, and anyways they've recently curtailed even that.

I realize this is not going to get a lot of upvotes on HN, but yes making it difficult to do hard drugs is a reasonable public policy goal. (Which again, is why literally every country on the planet does it). There's room to argue about the exact tactics, but the broad goal is perfectly legitimate

Re: The main thing about P2P meth is that there's so much of it (2021)

#35

Post by Aurornis »

trhway wrote: post #6

>He points out that “old” meth was made from ephedrine and that “new” meth is made from a chemical called Phenylacetone or P2P the new is just the old that came back. The old meth, "biker meth", was P2P. Then was ephedrine, and with a crackdown on ephedrine - back to P2P. Another noticeable thing - the recent shortage of ADHD medication while supposedly illegal meth production has been growing. Demand is present in b…

> Another noticeable thing - the recent shortage of ADHD medication while supposedly illegal meth production has been growing. Demand is present in both cases while the capitalism model of responding with supply seems to work very well only in one.

Capitalism isn’t the problem at all with prescription medications. The annual production amounts are regulated by the government. There has been an explosion in demand for ADHD prescriptions between the way it’s trending on social media and the recent shifts in how easily prescriptions are handed out.

I don’t agree that inducing artificial supply shortages is the right way to regulate it, but there is no “capitalism bad” story here. If anything this is a good example of how central command and control of production doesn’t work.

Re: The main thing about P2P meth is that there's so much of it (2021)

#36

Post by Aurornis »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #3

Fantastic write up. I think the biggest takeaway for me is just how insanely ineffective banning pseudoephedrine over the counter was. Price went down, usage went up overdose went up, seizures went up, the production just changed quickly and there wasn’t even a blip. Billions of uses of bullshit decongestant products that didn’t work at all… and to get the good stuff you still need to buy it from behind the counter a…

> banning pseudoephedrine over the counter was.

In many states it wasn’t banned. It just moved behind the counter and you could only by a limited amount per month.

Which was actually fantastically good for those of us who actually need it, because this made it available again instead of the empty shelves.

Re: The main thing about P2P meth is that there's so much of it (2021)

#37

Post by KarlKode »

whimsicalism wrote: post #28
trhway wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, while the show probably popularized the idea of purity for meth, in general strict prohibition leads to increase in purity and potency. We've recently seen that with heroin/fentanyl. There is probably still no "fentanyl of meth", and thus so far only purity increase. Once a more potent, fentanyl-like, meth appears, it will probably similarly get into and displace a lot of classic meth trade.

What? Prohibition historically showed the exact opposite. I suspect higher purity & potency of street drugs has much more to do with more sophisticated operators operating outside of the US than strict prohibition. Same with fentanyl.

I believe OP wanted to make the point that one of the most important things for people profiting from the illegal sale of drugs (meth or heroin/opiates) is to minimize the amount that has to be trafficked (1kg of 10% meth vs 100g of pure meth or 1kg of heroin vs 10g of fentanyl).

I believe this explanation is too simplistic...

Re: The main thing about P2P meth is that there's so much of it (2021)

#38

Post by [deleted] »

keepamovin wrote: post #10

The ephedrine (or pseudoephedrine) synthesis is a one step using phosphorus/iodine reduction directly to methamphetamine. It’s simple and clean in that only an acid base extraction is required, and only one set of NP solvents. All these others syntheses with multiple steps up the chances of weird toxic solvents or contaminants creeping in. I think it’s a contaminant issue that’s exacerbated by the drug use. The gover…

[deleted]

Re: The main thing about P2P meth is that there's so much of it (2021)

#39

Post by [deleted] »

zephen wrote: post #29

The article was doing so well until the conclusion. > Does this rule out the idea of contaminants? No. Even if it’s 97% pure d-meth, there could be something very nasty lurking in that last 3%. But I don’t see the need for such an explanation. We know there are many more heavy users, so there’s no need to go beyond the idea that quantity has a quality all its own. It's fine if the author finds it an uninteresting pro…

[deleted]

Re: The main thing about P2P meth is that there's so much of it (2021)

#40

Post by KarlKode »

hash872 wrote: post #34
keepamovin wrote: post #10

The ephedrine (or pseudoephedrine) synthesis is a one step using phosphorus/iodine reduction directly to methamphetamine. It’s simple and clean in that only an acid base extraction is required, and only one set of NP solvents. All these others syntheses with multiple steps up the chances of weird toxic solvents or contaminants creeping in. I think it’s a contaminant issue that’s exacerbated by the drug use. The gover…

>The government should just regulate it, control purity and production and let people access small amounts for recreation/performance Famously, the US spent about 15-20 years attempting this with opioids. They were widely available to people via a pseudo-medical process, or via secondhand dealing. Opioids were/are manufactured by regulated, publicly traded companies with inspectors who controlled purity and productio…

I think a astronomically better example would be programs in the Netherlands, Denmark or Switzerland, where people heavily addicted to heroine can get into programs that will provide them with pharmaceutical heroine. Still prescribed by doctors (although specialized ones), but not just for pulling a wisdom tooth with huge margins for the Sacklers...
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