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The drug revolution that no one can stop

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Re: The drug revolution that no one can stop

#61

Post by idiot900 »

protomyth wrote: post #26
coldcode wrote: post #2

I've never found any interest in taking anything stronger than an occasional beer but as a former chemist I find the research into these types of drugs fascinating. We really do need to look into areas that might be highly illegal if for no reason other than to learn how the brain works.

I dearly wish that in all the MJ legalization that some company would start extracting the chemical pain reliever and the appetite stimulant. We reduced smoking at it would be nice to have these in other forms.

Already been done: http://www.marinol.com/

Re: The drug revolution that no one can stop

#62

Post by lotsofmangos »

Fuzzwah wrote: post #4
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard, though. Many chemists have accidentally killed themselves with experimentation, because there's no way to really know the results of your experiments without testing it on someone.

[citation needed]

Well, Francis Bacon died of pneumonia, contracted while stuffing snow into a chicken as an experiment in refrigeration.

It doesn't exactly count as he was experimenting on the chicken rather than himself, but it does sound as though drugs may have been involved.

Re: The drug revolution that no one can stop

#63

Post by kragen »

Nursie wrote: post #17

Interesting that this article, originally investigated and published over a year ago, mentions phenmetrazine - derivatives have just started to appear on the grey market.... --edit-- I'm amazed at the quote from Caldicott at the end. WEDINOS is widely used by the NPS community to check the identity of their substances. It allows the project to map out drug emergence and for the users it provides a little safety check…

Phenmetrazine is itself a "designer drug"; as sort of explained in the article, it differs from amphetamine by an oxygen and a couple of carbons forming a morpholine ring including the amine moiety, and its designers hoped it would have some of amphetamine's effects (like weight loss) with less side effects. As with most designer phenethylamines, this turned out badly, though not as badly as e.g. Fen/Phen. (There have been a lot of "designer" phenethylamines; are you really sure that "derivatives [of phenmetrazine] have just started to appear on the grey market"? Are you sure PiHKAL doesn't have a few?)

Re: The drug revolution that no one can stop

#64

Post by bigiain »

barrkel wrote: post #38
jrapdx3 wrote: post #28

This article fits in with another thread here earlier today where I commented about using any drug entails some finite risk of bad effects. The apparently common belief that "designer drugs" shouldn't be "illegal" is certainly not supported by the article. I'm not sure what makes it so hard for some people to grasp the intrinsic dangers of ingesting "designer" drugs. Our physiology is complex and quirky, rendering al…

I commented about using any drug entails some finite risk of bad effects. The apparently common belief that "designer drugs" shouldn't be "illegal" is certainly not supported by the article. I can see your line of thinking: X has risks, X should not be done, thus make X illegal and X will not be done and the risk will no longer exist. But that's not the way the world works. Making X illegal does not prevent X being d…

There's also the unspoken "X has risks, and I don't want to do X, therefore X should be illegal".

I ride motorcycles. I have friends and family involved in scuba diving, paragliding, football, rock climbing, hell - even horse riding.

_All_ of those activities have "well known risks of serious injury or death" associated with them, and each of them I've heard recent stories of death in the extended circles of my family and friends.

I'm not sure whether the "designer drug" risk is anything like as high as some of those legal and "acceptable for your children" risks.

My approach is less "asking are the risks of X greater than the risks of making X illegal?", but closer to "Quantify the risks of X, work out which can be mitigated or reduced without needing to ban X, make sure participants are informed of the risks, and if needed ensure training/insurance/licencing is available if required".

Thirty thousand people a year are killed in motor vehicle accidents in the USA. We don't react by saying "Make cars illegal" - we manage, mitigate, reduce the risks (quite successfully, that 30k is down from 40k 10 years ago, and over 50k back in '79 and '80) - then we declare 30 thousand dead people a year an "acceptable cost" for the benefits of private car ownership.

Why aren't we able to be that rational about "designer drugs"?

Re: The drug revolution that no one can stop

#65

Post by bigiain »

Nursie wrote: post #47
jpatokal wrote: post #29

And these shenanigans, too, would be entirely unnecessary if known drugs were legal and regulated, and people could take controlled risks instead of playing Russian roulette with newly synthesized drugs.

There is a minority that are interested in novelty for its own ends. But you're right, most people that buy these things would be safer and happier with well-known, illegal drugs.

I think there's a majority into "novelty for it's own ends". Art, jazz, comedy, movies - they're all often used as sources to satisfy that need for "novelty".

Re: The drug revolution that no one can stop

#66

Post by girvo »

poizan42 wrote: post #35
NicoJuicy wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually read about a terrifying drug made by cheap materials in Russia (easy to self create) named Crocodile... Skin gets eaten and it's very horrifying to see long term users, carefull not for the weak of heart :s http://goo.gl/wiAXNx

That's just impure desomorphine though

I truly don't understand how desomorphine can be created through the RP/I route. It makes pretty much zero sense based on my chemistry knowledge (BSci in Chemistry, but didn't complete it, dropped out third year). I've no idea what they're actually injecting, but I do know that a lot of the photos a number of years ago that were tagged as "Krokodil" were in fact a different drug entirely

Re: The drug revolution that no one can stop

#67

Post by ChrisGranger »

NicoJuicy wrote: post #25
guard-of-terra wrote: post #6

Custom drugs are all rage in Russia. Chinese plants make synthetic cannabioids with varying formulas which then happen to be not made illegal yet. Those are moved into country, mixed with all kinds of chemical shit and sold as "курительные смеси" - mixes for smoking. This fall dozens of people died from these nasty chemicals, usually in packs in one city or another. There was a law passed which makes all that stuff i…

I actually read about a terrifying drug made by cheap materials in Russia (easy to self create) named Crocodile... Skin gets eaten and it's very horrifying to see long term users, carefull not for the weak of heart :s http://goo.gl/wiAXNx

There's a VICE documentary about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsUH8llvTZo Horrifying, and doubly so that people are doing this to themselves voluntarily...

Re: The drug revolution that no one can stop

#68

Post by syllogism »

Nursie wrote: post #47
jpatokal wrote: post #29

And these shenanigans, too, would be entirely unnecessary if known drugs were legal and regulated, and people could take controlled risks instead of playing Russian roulette with newly synthesized drugs.

There is a minority that are interested in novelty for its own ends. But you're right, most people that buy these things would be safer and happier with well-known, illegal drugs.

But how do you propose they buy them, when the legal highs are indistinguishable from them at a glance, and are cheaper and easier for dealers to buy?

Re: The drug revolution that no one can stop

#69

Post by spacehome »

lostgame wrote: post #57
vinceguidry wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd much rather take an illegal drug than a legal, 'under the radar' one. The personal risks of possibly getting thrown in jail are vastly dwarfed by the risks of ingesting an untested and completely unknown substance. The sad thing is that even the illegal ones often involve a terrible externalized human cost. Illegal drugs are consumed at scale, exploiting the producers and transporters, legal ones are consumed ind…

Alcohol: • makes people vomit • makes people fight and argue with each other • is incredibly easy to take to excess • physical addiction entirely possible • damaging to liver + kidneys Cannabis: • makes people lazy • makes people hungry • makes people generally friendlier • capable of curing cancer as well as many major diseases • not physically addictive So wait, what?

Alleviates symptoms of chemo, yes, but curing cancer? Is this a recent finding?

Re: The drug revolution that no one can stop

#70

Post by refurb »

girvo wrote: post #66
poizan42 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just impure desomorphine though

I truly don't understand how desomorphine can be created through the RP/I route. It makes pretty much zero sense based on my chemistry knowledge (BSci in Chemistry, but didn't complete it, dropped out third year). I've no idea what they're actually injecting, but I do know that a lot of the photos a number of years ago that were tagged as "Krokodil" were in fact a different drug entirely

RP/I2 is basically a source of hydrogen iodide (HI).

If you look at desomorphine, it's just a morphine molecule without the bottom hydroxyl group and the double bond reduced.

HI will reductively deoxygenate benzyl alcohols. The oxygen removed in morphine is an allyic alcohol which is in conjugation with the aromatic ring, so it has "benzyl alcohol-like properties". HI will also reduce the double bond.

As for the reaction mechanism, I'm not sure anyone has completely figured it out. One could suggest protonation of the hydroxyl group, elimination of water to form the carbocation, addition of the iodide ion(-). Another iodide ion then attacks the iodine on the molecule, which creates I2 and leaves a benzylic anion which is protonated by HI. Here is a good mechanism diagram [1].

[1]http://www.beilstein-journals.org/bjoc/content/inline/1860-5...

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