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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)

#211

Post by pixl97 »

bityard wrote: post #97
33MHz-i486 wrote: post #89

the problems with the meth epidemic are 3 fold. two problems are intrinsic to meth and one is a matter of public policy. 1) meth is highly addictive and there is no pharmacological intervention for that addiction. there is no clinically effective therapeutic treatment for it either 2) meth is neurodegenerative. heavy users end up with a permanent disability 3) at some point around 2010 a bunch of cities decided it wa…

Small towns in North America are are being decimated by meth. The drug dealers move in because there are no drug task forces, just underfunded and ill-equipped sheriffs and local police. My wife and I live in the suburbs now but grew up in a very rural community. Last year we went to a wedding there. It was shocking how many people under the age of 50 were missing half their teeth.

>there are no drug task forces

What is this going to fix exactly?

Putting half the population in jail?

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

#212

Post by zephen »

hx8 wrote: post #205
zephen wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right? One suspects that "knowing how it was made" implies "understanding contaminants to look for."

There's multiple avenues for gaining knowledge about manufacturing processes. One path is certainly examining the sample, which is largely discussed in the article by looking at ratios of isomers. There would be other key indicators to look for in an examination. We have no lack of sample material, gathered everyone on the supply chain from border seizure to end-user busts. Another path to "knowing how it was made" i…

> One path is certainly examining the sample, which is largely discussed in the article by looking at ratios of isomers.

The trend is for the unwanted L-isomer to be mostly eliminated. That doesn't really let you know the process. Other chemical markers are used for this:

"Reductive amination remains the preferred synthetic manufacturing route for methamphetamine with 98.4% of the MPP samples analyzed profiled as originating from a P2P precursor. Approximately 9% (n=62) of these P2P-based samples showed evidence of being synthesized to methamphetamine under Leuckart conditions. This process uses methylamine and formic acid or N-methylformamide as supporting chemicals. This percentage is a slight increase compared to CY 2022 seizures (~6%). In addition, the MPP has been monitoring the Mercury Amalgam sub-classification with approximately 2% of seizures (n=14) observed to have been synthesized under these conditions and an additional 1% (n=7) of sample profiles showing markers for both Leuckart and Mercury Amalgam reactions, indicating the mixing of finished products at some point during the postproduction process."

(from https://www.dea.gov/sites/default/files/2025-09/CY%202023%20...)

> Another path to "knowing how it was made" is examining the manufacturing facilities.

That's obviously not always possible. But the entire point of the discussion above is that law enforcement has a lot of samples and tests a lot of samples, so they are in a good position to understand what has changed.

Markers they found include formic acid and mercury. Neither of those would be particularly good for you to inhale.

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

#213

Post by zephen »

ulrikrasmussen wrote: post #88
zephen wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, if there are multiplicative effects from the different disruptors, that could certainly have a large effect.

Indeed, and for a layman like me it even sounds quite plausible that this could be what is making people go "mad as a hatter": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erethism Add to that that the routes of administration preferred by heaver users (smoking and injection) are also those that maximize the harms of mercury exposure.

Some tested samples had mercury. Others, formic acid. Neither one great to inhale.

https://www.dea.gov/sites/default/files/2025-09/CY%202023%20...

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

#214

Post by [deleted] »

chadgpt3 wrote: post #102
bityard wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small towns in North America are are being decimated by meth. The drug dealers move in because there are no drug task forces, just underfunded and ill-equipped sheriffs and local police. My wife and I live in the suburbs now but grew up in a very rural community. Last year we went to a wedding there. It was shocking how many people under the age of 50 were missing half their teeth.

Is it the government's job to enforce people's teeth? I presume you also observed something worse than that but chose not to write about it?

[deleted]

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

#215

Post by sleight42 »

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 wonder what sort of environment and conditions contribute to large populations seeking to use opioids in the first place?

Theory: this is a socioeconomic problem rather than a public health problem. Our systems care too little for people. The easiest solution then is for people to self-medicate.

It's easier to deny people a harmful salve that they feel they need than to provide them the social supports that they deserve.

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

#216

Post by mx7zysuj4xew »

flomo wrote: post #103
keepamovin wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My view of a lot of the opioid crisis stuff aside from physical pain is psychological trauma - people self medicating as an alternative to doing the work. That’s why I think the psychoactive legislation that’s introduced recently about psychedelics is so important because those things can rapidly accelerate processing and healing psychological trauma. My view, is if this was done 20 - 30 years ago there wouldn’t be s…

Cocaine and Heroin (and LSD...) were widely available 20-30-40-50 years ago. Maybe this is a "It's the economy, stupid" thing?

Pretty much. Most Americans live awful miserable lives regardless of being addicted to drugs or not

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

#217

Post by mx7zysuj4xew »

consp wrote: post #136
tormeh wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The Dutch law is literally called the "Opiumwet" or opiate law. [1] It involves (almost) all controlled substances. 1. https://wetten.overheid.nl/BWBR0001941/2026-01-28

Yeah, but we also have the separation of "hard-" and "soft-" drugs

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

#218

Post by Arch485 »

gocartStatue wrote: post #165

Or maybe, just maybe, abusing even pure, pharma-grade meth causes schizophrenia.

Honestly, that was sort of the impression I got. It's not that the meth is contaminated, it's that the meth is way stronger and more pure. I wouldn't be surprised if incredibly high doses of any stimulant causes schizophrenia.

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

#219

Post by AnthonyMouse »

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…

> 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.

There is a pretty decent argument that this was still a result of pseudo-prohibition, which goes like this:

Opioids were easy to get a prescription for, but still required a prescription (and were covered by insurance), and were still highly restricted in who could manufacture them. That made the margins high, and consequently created a perverse incentive for the manufacturers to want patients taking the high margin insurance-funded opioids rather than a cheap commodity out-of-pocket NSAID or acetaminophen.

Because they still required a prescription, getting people taking them meant they had to capture the prescribing physicians, who now get their own perverse incentives. Not only marketing/kickbacks/incentives from the pharma companies, if something over the counter would work and that's what you recommend, the patients buy a bottle at Walmart for $5 whenever they need it and you never see them again, but prescribe something stronger and you get to bill their insurance again and again every time they need another appointment to re-up.

But "ask your doctor" was supposed to be the thing you do to get sound advice. Give the medical establishment a profit incentive to over-recommend the addictive thing and what do you expect?

Meanwhile if they were all available at the convenience store for the same price, nobody would have the incentive to push the addictive one, and then when you ask your doctor (or for that matter anyone else) what they recommend, they would generally tell you not to take opioids unless you really need them.

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

#220

Post by buu700 »

sleight42 wrote: post #215
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…

I wonder what sort of environment and conditions contribute to large populations seeking to use opioids in the first place? Theory: this is a socioeconomic problem rather than a public health problem. Our systems care too little for people. The easiest solution then is for people to self-medicate. It's easier to deny people a harmful salve that they feel they need than to provide them the social supports that they de…

Exactly. It's more helpful to look at this from the perspective of solving problems that push people toward unhealthy choices than from the perspective of how we can limit the freedom of adults for their own good. A few other thoughts:

1. US tobacco policy is far more liberal than the War on Drugs, yet which of the two is a successful case study in curbing harmful addiction?

2. The recent opioid epidemic is far more complex than "the government tried legalizing opioids and it failed". Whatever policies did exist weren't legalization of opioids, and didn't exist in a vacuum. You can't model that policy without factoring in the wide availability of contaminated street drugs and absence of safer OTC cannabis alternatives. More importantly, the drugs weren't merely available, but actively pushed in a way that should have been legally discouraged.

3. The above analysis completely ignores the most important point raised in the top-level comment: prohibition simply redirects capital from businesses that are regulated to those that are not. Say what you will about Big Pharma, but they usually don't go around hanging mutilated bodies from bridges.

4. Even if drug prohibition were the optimal policy for reducing addiction rates, at some point protecting people from their own choices ceases to be a valid excuse for harming the rest of us. We've punished countless marijuana users who mostly aren't addicts, inflicted terror and destabilization upon our neighbors to the south, and created what at least half of America believes to be an illegal immigration crisis.

5. The claim that drug prohibition even helps the people it's ostensibly supposed to help is extremely dubious. We're subjecting addicts to more dangerous substances than the ones they're actually seeking out, and locking up the ones who survive. Maybe there's a narrow slice of people who really want narcotics but lack the motivation to navigate black markets, but otherwise who is this all for? We're hurting everyone in our confusion just to enrich a cabal of warlords.

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