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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)

#111

Post by fc417fc802 »

applfanboysbgon wrote: post #63
hash872 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Those are exactly the people you want to have access to it Yes but that's different from 'every random person can buy some meth at 7-11 or the government store' though. I'm fine with a controlled program for registered, hardcore addicts- the 2% who do 50% of the drugs or what have you. >The problem was not in fact opioids. It was the profit structure behind the distribution network. Remove that and the bulk of the p…

That's a bit of an apples and oranges comparison. The thing about for-profit prescriptions is that they incentivize doctors to prescribe opiates for people who don't need them, people who may not have even been interested in them. A for-profit retailer selling alcohol doesn't have that aspect at play at all; at most the for-profit aspect encourages flashy advertising and displaying alcohol more prominently, but nothi…

Alcoholics (the really bad ones that we're presumably talking about here) don't consume because of social pressure. It's addiction and all the associated psychological and sociological complexity that implies.

I expect any comparison of alcoholism rates will need to account for social (particularly religion) and socioeconomic factors. An awful lot of addicts are engaging in escapism.

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

#112

Post by tormeh »

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…

Not every drug is an opioid. We have prohibition laws designed for opioids blindly applied to any (in the western context) nontraditional drug. The German law on drugs is literally called "the painkiller law", for instance.

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

#113

Post by fc417fc802 »

cyberax wrote: post #76
thepryz wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally consider the war on drugs to be a colossal failure and there tends to be widespread agreement that the War on Drugs was somewhat effective at enabling enforcement, but ineffective or counterproductive at eliminating drugs or reducing long-term harm. What America continues to ignore, intentionally or not, is the root cause of drug addiction which tends to be a more complicated and nuanced

Well, now the war on drug is over and we see that the harms from _not_ doing it are worse. In 2023, overdoses overtook gun and traffic deaths _combined_. Surrendering to the drugs was a mistake. Yeah, we should have changed tactics. Zero-tolerance policies were terrible nonsense, long prison terms were not helpful, and we should have clamped on prescription pills way sooner. > but ineffective or counterproductive at…

It seems like you've already made up your mind what to believe. In particular you've failed to critically analyze the broader context in which overdose deaths went up and I also have to question your suggestion that the war on drugs in the US ever ended.

Sure, marijuana is largely accepted at this point. Most other things you still buy from gangsters on a street corner or via the darknet and will still be arrested for having, frequently losing your job as a side effect.

To overdose deaths, those largely correlate to the Sacklers (ie medical professionals inappropriately pushing product with a veneer of legitimacy) and to fentanyl. The latter is particularly deadly due to the combination of accessibility to amateurs with the inherent difficulty of safely compounding such a potent chemical as part of a clandestine operation.

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

#114

Post by [deleted] »

tormeh wrote: post #112
hash872 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

Not every drug is an opioid. We have prohibition laws designed for opioids blindly applied to any (in the western context) nontraditional drug. The German law on drugs is literally called "the painkiller law", for instance.

[deleted]

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

#115

Post by AngryData »

cyberax wrote: post #50
hash872 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

> A shattering drug addiction crisis that at its height killed more people annually than the entire Vietnam War. Except that you're wrong. The war-on-drugs kept drugs under control. It did not _eliminate_ them, but they also were not available on every street corner. Once we stopped the war-on-drugs, the abuse rates skyrocketed. Not just opiods, but also meth. You can see it on the graphs in this article, the general…

To me this reads as naive because I could get most any drug on many street corners easily any time within the last 30 years once I was old enough to realize what was going on and notice.

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

#116

Post by trhway »

z33k wrote: post #108
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.

The pyrovalerones are basically the fentanyl of meth. More potent, shorter lasting, more dangerous.

i'm a layman here, so just googled it:

https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/Pyrovalerone

"Pyrovalerone is a DEA Schedule V controlled substance. Substances in the DEA Schedule V have a low potential for abuse relative to substances listed in Schedule IV and consist primarily of preparations containing limited quantities of certain narcotics."

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

#117

Post by vladms »

applfanboysbgon wrote: post #63
hash872 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Those are exactly the people you want to have access to it Yes but that's different from 'every random person can buy some meth at 7-11 or the government store' though. I'm fine with a controlled program for registered, hardcore addicts- the 2% who do 50% of the drugs or what have you. >The problem was not in fact opioids. It was the profit structure behind the distribution network. Remove that and the bulk of the p…

That's a bit of an apples and oranges comparison. The thing about for-profit prescriptions is that they incentivize doctors to prescribe opiates for people who don't need them, people who may not have even been interested in them. A for-profit retailer selling alcohol doesn't have that aspect at play at all; at most the for-profit aspect encourages flashy advertising and displaying alcohol more prominently, but nothi…

> Instead the pressure to consume alcohol comes at a grassroots level.

Lately the trend seems to be slightly decreasing, see : https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-alcohol-1890 (of course heavy dependent on the country and the timescale selected)

> Social alcohol consumption is deeply rooted in human culture

This is actually dependent on the culture and not all are the same, interesting paper on the topic (in cultures with higher agricultural interdependency alchool was not used as a tool for social cohesion): https://www.researchgate.net/publication/404116345_On_the_Fu...

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

#118

Post by fc417fc802 »

tomjen3 wrote: post #81
yojo wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oregon decriminalized drugs in 2020 and the experiment is widely viewed as a failure by both sides of the political spectrum. The Democratic legislature rolled it back four years later. It doesn’t necessarily follow that it’s impossible to have a legalized or decriminalized regime that works, but it is non-trivial to get right.

Its meaningless to decriminalize using it, since it does not give big benefit of replacing narco terrorists producers with pure, controlled stuff from legal pharma companies. The world is obviously better of without drugs, but given that is not going to happen, the question to decide is: is the world better of with drugs from legal pharmacutical companies, or (somewhat) restricted access to drugs through an illegal s…

> The world is obviously better of without drugs,

You slip such a confident assertion in there seemingly without justification. Do you think (for example) that the world would be better off without alcohol? I certainly don't. Everything has downsides; that doesn't on its own justify eliminating it. It's analogous to the adage that the most secure computer is the one encased in a block of cement so as to render it entirely unusable.

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

#119

Post by applfanboysbgon »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #111
applfanboysbgon wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a bit of an apples and oranges comparison. The thing about for-profit prescriptions is that they incentivize doctors to prescribe opiates for people who don't need them, people who may not have even been interested in them. A for-profit retailer selling alcohol doesn't have that aspect at play at all; at most the for-profit aspect encourages flashy advertising and displaying alcohol more prominently, but nothi…

Alcoholics (the really bad ones that we're presumably talking about here) don't consume because of social pressure. It's addiction and all the associated psychological and sociological complexity that implies. I expect any comparison of alcoholism rates will need to account for social (particularly religion) and socioeconomic factors. An awful lot of addicts are engaging in escapism.

Addiction doesn't start until you've first started consuming a substance. The means by which you first start consuming alcohol vs. opioids are completely different, and the former is virtually always the result of social environment.

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

#120

Post by dev_hugepages »

trhway wrote: post #116
z33k wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pyrovalerones are basically the fentanyl of meth. More potent, shorter lasting, more dangerous.

i'm a layman here, so just googled it: https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/Pyrovalerone "Pyrovalerone is a DEA Schedule V controlled substance. Substances in the DEA Schedule V have a low potential for abuse relative to substances listed in Schedule IV and consist primarily of preparations containing limited quantities of certain narcotics."

He's talking about the derivatives (nicknamed Pyros because they're related to Pyrovalerone) like α-PVP, MDPV and others.
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