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 government should just regulate it, control purity and production and let people access small amounts for recreation/performance. It’s not an evil drug per se - long history before it was criminalized. Plus that would neuter the cartels and protect people’s health more than pushing it underground.
>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
I don’t think it’s fair to say we tried letting people access it for recreational or performance use. The insurance companies and doctors became drug pushers without an explicit acknowledgment of what was happening. Easy access to drugs without being able to discuss what was really happening is worse than prohibition sure, but that’s not informed consent. Informed consent is the patient tells the supplier what they’re doing and the supplier is trained to handle that. Our doctors are not drug shamen or addiction specialists, but we could imagine a situation where these are the people providing drugs, safe drug sites, and free counseling. Otherwise the solution is men with guns and weird geopolitical shit. Also the government gets to decide what drugs people can take which I disagree with in general. There has to be a better way.
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...
Your opioid comparison is wildly apples to oranges. They were marketed and sold to consumers as safe, much more effective, and dramatically less addictive than it actually was. An industrial addiction machine ignored regulatory safeguards, built a 'pay for play' rewards structure to incentivize prescriptions, and a zillion other cartoonishly evil things .
There is a world of difference between something like that and government dosed methadone, meth, etc.
The problem was not in fact opioids. It was the profit structure behind the distribution network. Remove that and the bulk of the problems go away too.
If the drug is socially stigmatized only true addicts will use it. Those are exactly the people you want to have access to it because they can be gradually tapered off on a controlled dosage, they can be targeted for interventions, and it keeps them from stabbing you and stealing your wallet to get more meth.
Its incredibly counterproductive to just outlaw a thing that people need on a level that they will do almost anything to get it.
Could you then be more clear where exactly your claim came from? I did not find it, but rather this:
"According to medical professionals, supervised injection sites are effective in reducing overdose deaths and the transmission of infectious diseases."
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.
> 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.
That depends on the drug. Both it's addictiveness and its destructiveness. It's likely true for meth. I doubt it's true for weed. It's demonstrably not true for many of the OTC drugs that have been easy to get for hundreds of years without the collapse of society
> 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.
I'm not aware that anyone every tried to do it right.
Like how about you have to do a short course which actually explains to you how a drug works, how to use it correctly, what are potential downsides, what are markers of overuse/wrong use.
And the other main issue with opioids and co: some people really have constant / chronic pain.
Do you know how exhaustive it is to constantly have pain? How annoying it is that you can't just go to bed and sleep?
But also we can't play devils advocate to say "you are not allowed to do drugs to num whatever issue you have" and also "but i don't want to take time and effort of helping you".
Oh i don't want you to kill yourself! But i don't want to spend time tomorrow afternoon either with you.
Our society is very hypcritical in this sense. Honestly i think people just don't want to see homeless people or fentapoeple. Its not about helping, its just about not being disturbed by them.
This is a tired trope but must be made: society has accepted that drugs can be dangerous but we won't stop people from using them -- leading with alcohol and tobacco. Yes, restrict access to youth and avoid reckless advertising, but still the people's choice.
If the drugs are pure, and health problems that occur with abusing them (overdoses and addiction) are treated as health issues rather than criminal issues, then it's all a solvable problem.
Heroin being illegal didn't stop my brother from dying on it.
Opioids have never been made legal for recreational purpose. They were sold as painkillers by pharma corporations lying about their addictive effects and promoted through marketing campaign targeting doctors to prescribe them.
I has nothing to do with the topic of recreational drugs.
In low doses most hard drugs that are uppers are pretty decent performance enhancing drugs. It's dumb that society can't get energy drinks and stuff with "low enough you can't realistically abuse them because you'll spend too much time going to piss" amounts of cocaine, amphetamines, etc.
What if they were legal but hard to get? Say, we stop/arresting for possession or use in private, stop giving dealers and producers harsh sentences, but still give them moderate to weak sentences, stop proactively searching for dealers and producers, allow companies to produce with strict KYC, and don't allow retail sale in stores?
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.
Look at alcohol. How many lives are negatively affected because of alcohol being freely available? By numbers alone when something is legal there are people who will participate who would otherwise never go near it if it were illegal. We're seeing this with weed right now imo.
Because it's legal, people will try it. And because we live in a country where it is celebrated, encouraged, and every holiday seems to be an excuse for folks to get hammered, A LOT of people will try it. How many would never touch it if it were illegal? How many wouldn't drink and drive and kill themselves? How many innocent people in the other car, completely sober, would still be here? Because remember, booze, or drugs in general, impact more than just the user. Their families, friends, and other random people can be impacted. How many kids grow up with a drunk parent, unable to properly express or process emotions, might not have to grow up unable to maintain healthy friendships because they don't know what they look like, or won't be taken advantage of because they have a caretaker/fixer mentality because that's what they had to do as a kid.
We know making booze illegal doesn't work, and that's not what I'm suggesting here. I'm not even suggesting anything. I'm just saying, the blast radius of booze impacts a lot of people beyond the alcoholic, and statistically, a portion of those lives negatively impacted are the direct result of alcohol being legal. I can speak from firsthand experience the impact of an alcoholic single parent growing up, which would be the reason I look at this topic the way I do. Would I have been given a more healthy and "normal" childhood had booze been illegal? Idk. But some kid out there would have, which might be all that matters.
> 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 wind-down of drug abuse policies started around 2008-2010.
> 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.
No, policy wise I appreciate you getting into the nuance, but I feel like you take the argument to polar extremes (with an attitude of confident, final certainty), when the expected outcome is across the middle. This smells more like ideology than practicality.
> These discussions always end up …
Before your comment i wouldn’t say anyone is lacking curiosity here. Tho your comment about fixing into a stereotype, seems the example of itself. I think it’s better to listen and discuss than assume the futures settle into a mischaracterization that you’ve already decided. That doesn’t seem very useful - except for ideology…
On the toxicity side, do you have any studies to cite? I wasn’t aware of toxicity, but it’s plausible.
Big picture tho, I’m not an expert in drug policy. It just sounds like a logical way to reduce harm overall. Reduce harm overall - worth repeating; on average, create a better society.
The conceivable parties who would lose out are: government funded agencies charged with fighting drug crime because their caseload and budgets would probably decrease; and on the other side the cartels and dealers. Although what seems to happen with the latter is once something is legalized, the supply chains morph into legitimate businesses somehow.
I still think it would work. I’m not convinced by what you said. Thank you tho
I've bounced between viewpoints so many times in life regarding legalisation of drugs. It's a fascinating argument.
Something which has always grounded my beliefs is the comparison to alcohol.
Imagine we walked into bars and were presented with unmarked bottle of clear liquid, and had to order "1 alcohol, please!", where the alcohol % and quality of the drink was totally random. It'd be fucking chaos.
I think I've settled on the "drugs should be legal" but heeavvviillyyy regulated and marked. I wouldn't mind going to a bar and ordering a very weak MDMA drink, or going to a shisha cafe with weakened opium, weed, crack, etc.
Also, it seems the way drugs are punished criminally is totally wrong. Why not lock people up for false advertising rather than 'strength'? I.e if you're heavily cutting drugs, you should be strung up for manslaughter. It would put pressure on the manufacturers to label and regulate themselves.
I believe harm reduction is the answer. There are people who will be curious to try substances no matter what you do -- and no matter for what reason.
Here is some of what the US has been doing ever since the "war on drugs" started:
- Ban the sale of such substances, forcing users to resort to the black market.
- Lock up anyone who uses or possesses such substances, training users that there is no help for them.
- Lock up anyone who helps or intends to help anyone else use or possess such substances, training users that there is no helping others.
- Censor information on how to reduce the risks of substance use, forcing users to put themselves in more danger. (Contrary to apparent popular belief, this does not dissuade users, only harm them.)
- Censor information on how to produce or obtain such substances, preventing the discovery of reliable sources.
- Engage in relentless fearmongering about how terrible and bad such substances are, encouraging users to entirely disregard all warnings about substance use.
In my opinion, here is what one should actually do:
- Regulate the production and sale of such substances. Don't force users to resort to the black market.
- Encourage harm reduction and responsibility towards substance use. Don't train users that there is no help for them.
- Warn only of the real risks and concerns about substance use. Don't train users to disregard very real dangers by flooding them with fake ones.
- Offer reliable sources for such substances. Don't force users to resort to dubious leads.
Recent research into psilocybin therapy, for instance, is very exciting. I've been using psychedelics at home for years, and I dream of a world where known quantities and potencies of such things can be reliably sourced over-the-counter for such use. I don't know if I'll live to see the day.
Also note that none of this prevents helping users who genuinely need it -- users with less self-control, for instance, or harmful dependency. But forcing them all into terrible shame, withdrawal and eventually an utterly preventable death, is the same kind of bullshit that looked at building more homes and then invented anti-homeless architecture instead.
> 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 article addresses this:
> Second, the evidence we have is against the idea of contaminants in P2P meth. Almost all meth was produced using P2P since 2012, before most reports of schizophrenia. And P2P meth synthesis has changed several times in the interim, resulting in higher purity than ever before.
Not saying they're right, but the author at least believes this hypothesis is contradicted by the data.
Yeah, I just don’t think that’s very strong. The immediate precursor may not be the issue but the residues of routes to get to that precursor and what that precursor is contaminated with etc. that’s my point.
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 system?
Decrimininalizing drug use is the worst of both worlds: you get more drug access, but it still happens through the illegal system and benefits narco terrorists.
If you don't want to put drug users in jail (you cannot reasonably fine homeless people), you can offer drug courts and diversionary programs.
You need the federal government to do what it did with Marijuana (which is still federally illegal), to be able to try the other choice.
2020 was famously a period where the pandemic and the opioid crisis were causing death and despair all over the country, but somehow that became the excuse for backpedaling on decriminalization in Oregon before there could have even been effects to study, not to mention before there was time to study those effects. They even recriminalized drugs that have never been associated with overdose or addiction, like psychedelics. Basically, they did the bare minimum necessary to be able to say "we tried it and it didn't work" with a straight face.
Don't fall for it.
> I think it’s a contaminant issue that’s exacerbated by the drug use.
I think the various pieces of evidence presented in the article basically all point against this. Is there a reason you think the evidence in the article is flawed?
I don’t take the article as authoritative. It’s argument against contamination is not strong. It doesn’t present any real evidence for it. You can elaborate if you like
Do you have any memories that you cannot let go of? That play back in your head incessantly every single day without fail? That obsess nearly every waking moment? For addicts, that memory is the dopamine release of being high, and it definitely can happen after a single use. It doesn’t impress everyone in the same way, but for those who are vulnerable to it, it becomes nearly the only thought they can have until they scratch that itch. I used to think just like you, but after dealing with and truly understanding addiction in people close to me, I can never support legalization of certain super-addictive drugs. There is no one deserving of the torment that addicts are cursed with. We should try to ensure less people, not more, are ever introduced to it.
Hmm, i get why you’d reach that conclusion with your experience, but i dispute that given the same experience only that conclusion is valid.
The “super addict edge case” is a problem but the good of the many outweighs the good of the few. Don’t discard, but manage. I believe access to drugs should be psych/(genetic if reliable)/“allergy type”/behavior tested. I won’t give you salvia if you will flip out per tests, but if you’re okay, you’re green.
The advantage of state controlled access is that you can actually achieve that, in theory. Promoting the thing you’re against rn might actually help reduce the harm you want to remove.
Government does sorta regulate it. Desoxyn is (rarely) prescribed for ADHD when other meds aren't effective enough.
The difference between most amphetamines and Desoxyn is that extra methyl group. That methyl group helps it cross the blood-brain barrier a little faster but the chemical that reaches the brain is the same in both cases.
> The government should just regulate it, control purity and production and let people access small amounts for recreation/performance.
The thing is, drugs are addictive. ESPECIALLY meth. How would you prevent people from just getting as much as they want and then becoming drug zombies? Fentanyl is similar. Cartels perfected its production, so now it's pure and widely available.
It's even worse than meth in some regards. Once you start using fentanyl, you're going to become a hardened addict. And there will be almost no hope of recovery, the success rate of drug rehab treatments is in single-digit percentages.
I guess the idea is that people will just keep using "safer" drugs like cocaine instead? I'm not sure it's working, we legalized cannabis and it made zero difference.
The main idea indeed is usually "channeling consumption" to less harmful substances, dosages/concentrations and outlets.
A prime example is alcohol, where prohibition led to bad outcomes. This led to the regulated legalization model.
E.g. in some Nordic countries hard liquor is still only available in government stores and licensed restaurants, with exactly this logic. Not long ago bars could serve only one "unit" of alcohol at a time. Longer ago there were limits to how much alcohol one could buy in a week.
> I guess the idea is that people will just keep using "safer" drugs like cocaine instead? I'm not sure it's working, we legalized cannabis and it made zero difference.
Cannabis and cocaine are very different kinds of substances with very different uses and audiences. Expecting legalized cannabis to substantially reduce cocaine use is like expecting banning of coffee would substantially increase alcohol consumption. There can be some minor effects due to multiple illegal substances tending to have the same outlets, but this is likely a subtle at best.
Also how much more "safe" cocaine is from methamphetamine is not that clear. Probably the largest effect is from very different demographics of methamphetamine vs cocaine users.
Drugs are not addictive in a sense that they make person to go out and buy more. The only thing about drugs is that they are the best thing in that person’s life at the moment.
Blaming drugs is as outdated as blaming npm package for vulnerability that some bad actor pushed into it.
I have a wild idea. Why not spend that money on providing good mental health and rehabilitation services instead?
I have multiple close family members who have struggled badly with drug and alcohol abuse. Good treatment is the way, not the government handing out drugs.
It's a pretty bad drug, I can see only disadvantages over plain amphetamine.
If amphetamine isn't strong enough, you already have a serious problem.
I'm not saying that criminalization is the right way, just that I don't see a responsible recreational/performance use for methamphetamine. It's too strong and too toxic. The regulation should permit only use for addiction management imho.
Also, the long history is not exactly in its favor, given how the Nazis extensively used it and Hitler was probably a serious meth-junkie.
> It's a pretty bad drug, I can see only disadvantages over plain amphetamine.
The main "advantage" is probably the smoking RoA of methamphetamine. The RoA difference is likely a larger factor in methamphetamine vs plain amphetamine effects than the pharmacology of the molecule.
Not saying the risk profiles are the same, but some of the perception of different danger might be psychosocial normative informed by the differing criminalization. Plausible at least no? Important to keep that in mind.
Regular amphetamine (speed) is relatively okay as long as you’re not one of the people who’s wired to absolutely love it and develop a problem with it.
Meth on the other hand really is quite nasty, it’s directly neurotoxic to dopamine neurons in a way that regular speed isn’t
Except that you fail to mention that amphetamine abuse is strongly associated with Parkinson's and other neurological diseases, which are serious public health burdens, and likely contribute to the phenomena of high personal tax regions like the EU.
And I thought for a second they were talking about peer to peer meth but no that's what the DEA shut down by tightly controlling pseudoephedrine, where before meth using meth makers were making meth and distributing it.
It certainly seems like prohibition is just making things worse and making it more lucrative for the least ethical of black market producers.
Similar situation with fentanyl when compared to previous opiates.
> that's what the DEA shut down by tightly controlling pseudoephedrine, where before meth using meth makers were making meth and distributing it.
Phosphorus-ephedrine meth, aka shake-and-bake.
> It certainly seems like prohibition is just making things worse and making it more lucrative for the least ethical of black market producers.
I don't think P2P meth is any worse than what came before it. Prohibition is making things somewhat worse here for legal access to pseudoephedrine, though.
Ha, funny. I thought it must be “p2p mesh” network architecture at first, then checked the comments and was like “oh p2p distributed meth?” Like you, hahaha
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 problem because the probable answer is staring us in the face, but still, he only has a plausible hypothesis.
If Sam Quinones is correct in that there is a fundamental difference in meth then and now that is causing major issues for addicts, it would certainly be in society's interest to figure that out and rectify it.
The author points out a synthesis route that includes lead in a reducing agent, and I think that other routes also depend on reducing agents that contain mercury (aluminum amalgam). Heavy metal exposure is cumulative, so even small amounts over a long time could be significant. They also disrupt the same dopaminergic system that heavy doses of stimulants disrupt, so the effects could be hard to find if we only look at the population that uses illicit stimulants.
Heavy disclaimer: I am neither a chemist nor a doctor, so this is speculation on my part.
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 was totally cool if dealing and public use were normalized/decriminalized in areas their most vulnerable populations hang out.
(3) is an incredibly stupid and expensive policy given (1) and (2)
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'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" is examining the manufacturing facilities. I think LE has some understanding of the flow of precursor into foreign manufacturing facilities, and this has become a common hot topic issue in international trade.
>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 both cases while the capitalism model of responding with supply seems to work very well only in one.
> 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.
In the former case, you have government artificially suppressing supply and acting to dissuade pharmacies from keeping almost any extra stock, which is unfortunate.
Ephedrine isn't banned, not even behind a prescription, there's just rather strict limits on how much you can buy a month. I take a Bronkaid every morning with my coffee.
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 and give ID.
Throwback to A Simple and Convenient Synthesis of Pseudoephedrine From N-Methylamphetamine [0] [1], a 2012 paper describing how to synthesize Sudafed from meth lol
I don't think its innate though - most people I've met can think of higher order consequences or at least understand them.
The real issue is actually measuring results. I think we have to design society to factor higher order effects in. That means a fundamentally new approach to things like voting and tracking accountability.
Is it even possible? Who knows. Sometimes I think our problems have outstripped individual life spans which makes them intractable.
Limiting pseudoephedrine need not have effect on overall quantity to have huge positive societal effects. More P2P in industrial laboratories means less DIY Birch reductions in a soda bottle.
The other day I needed pseudoephedrine, so I asked for one box of instant tablets and one box of extended release capsules. The store said they’re only allowed to sell me one box so I had to choose.
I’m so glad these policies made it so meth isn’t super easy to find anymore.
Oh wait, meth is still dirt cheap fucking everywhere, but now I also can’t get effective cold medicine either. Can we please just admit this policy doesn’t have any effect on the meth supply curve and please put pseudoephedrine back in Dayquil?
d-meth being the desirable one (leaving l-meth undesirable) matches up with my anecdotal experience with adderall, which is approximately equal parts d-amphetamine and l-amphetamine -- it's not quite methamphetamine, but it's closely related.
I was given some by prescription for ADHD, and when I first tried it, it completely destroyed me for some reason -- I could not seem to get myself out of bed to eat (or do much of anything), even when I was very hungry. I ended up having to sleep it off, because being awake for that was very distressing -- not only did it not help me, but it seemed it had caused me even greater executive dysfunction.
When I brought this up at my next appointment, I was prescribed pure d-amph to try next. This actually helped me a lot, and continues to help me to this day.
I can only guess that the l-amph was the problem with the adderall that day. While my body seems to also have issues with different brands of d-amph, they're more like heart issues rather than executive function issues.
It's not insane, and it's the other way around. The writers consulted directly with DEA agents, they were being told how the meth trade was changing and wrote reality into their show.
Pseudoephedrine restrictions drove the search for new chemistry and the new chemistry brought in the large scale labs.
I was thinking the same thing, though I couldn't remember the timeline. Makes me wonder if there was something already in the zeitgeist, or if it was fueled by the obsession with purity in the series. I could totally see Breaking Bad causing chemists to want to up their game, or causing chemists to get clowned for having low purity.
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.
Was "Interstate 60" scenario every seriously considered for dealing with drug use problems? I think it could make both parties happy, drug users would disappear from cities and they would have unlimited amount of drugs in their utopia.
The US in general would probably benefit greatly from delineating regions and having different sets of laws. The resulting ability to self segregate according to ideology would presumably reduce political conflict.
We could call the regions "states" and enshrine their right to self government in the constitution. You know, to make sure the federal government doesn't end up trampling on it at some point in the far future.
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.
This article explores whether P2P meth is more likely to cause schizophrenia than Ephedrine meth and does so in a very methodical and data - driven manner. However, the very basis of all of this is non existent. He presents zero evidence that meth users now have a higher rate of schizophrenia and only refers to an anecdotal statement by one guy. Seems like a lot of effort to go through before even exploring if the claim is legitimate.
> Ephedrine meth was like a party drug. […] You could normally kind of more or less hang onto your life. You had a house, you had a job. […] P2P meth was nothing like that. It was a very sinister drug. It brought you inside. You didn’t want to be around other people. You wanted to just kind of be alone with whatever bizarre thoughts your mind was now cooking up, and conspiracies.
That sounds a lot like the progression of many stimulant addictions.
In the gay community it brings groups of guys into a mutual spiral of addiction and weirdly long sexual practices. They feel like they’re having the best time at first until they are isolated and completely chemically addicted. I’ve lost a friend and many acquaintances this way.
All it takes is one party where your friends “molly” is not so pure and you’re high for 18 hours straight. “Let’s do that again next week” turns into “all weekend” turns into “all the time”
Tried clicking the fivethirtyeight link halfway down the article, and was immediately reminded of what abc decided to start doing today. What an asshole move.
Happy to see that meth is becoming more affortable, maybe inflation isn't so bad after all if we consider all the things we have access to and that have come down in price since few decades ago. /s
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 government should just regulate it, control purity and production and let people access small amounts for recreation/performance. It’s not an evil drug per se - long history before it was criminalized. Plus that would neuter the cartels and protect people’s health more than pushing it underground.
>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
I don’t think it’s fair to say we tried letting people access it for recreational or performance use. The insurance companies and doctors became drug pushers without an explicit acknowledgment of what was happening. Easy access to drugs without being able to discuss what was really happening is worse than prohibition sure, but that’s not informed consent. Informed consent is the patient tells the supplier what they’re doing and the supplier is trained to handle that. Our doctors are not drug shamen or addiction specialists, but we could imagine a situation where these are the people providing drugs, safe drug sites, and free counseling. Otherwise the solution is men with guns and weird geopolitical shit. Also the government gets to decide what drugs people can take which I disagree with in general. There has to be a better way.
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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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Your opioid comparison is wildly apples to oranges. They were marketed and sold to consumers as safe, much more effective, and dramatically less addictive than it actually was. An industrial addiction machine ignored regulatory safeguards, built a 'pay for play' rewards structure to incentivize prescriptions, and a zillion other cartoonishly evil things .
There is a world of difference between something like that and government dosed methadone, meth, etc.
The problem was not in fact opioids. It was the profit structure behind the distribution network. Remove that and the bulk of the problems go away too.
If the drug is socially stigmatized only true addicts will use it. Those are exactly the people you want to have access to it because they can be gradually tapered off on a controlled dosage, they can be targeted for interventions, and it keeps them from stabbing you and stealing your wallet to get more meth.
Its incredibly counterproductive to just outlaw a thing that people need on a level that they will do almost anything to get it.
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"the Wiki page for the opioid crisis is quite clear that at least 50% of all deaths were due to perfectly legal, regulated opioids"
Are you talking about this page?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opioid_epidemic
Could you then be more clear where exactly your claim came from? I did not find it, but rather this:
"According to medical professionals, supervised injection sites are effective in reducing overdose deaths and the transmission of infectious diseases."
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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.
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> 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.
That depends on the drug. Both it's addictiveness and its destructiveness. It's likely true for meth. I doubt it's true for weed. It's demonstrably not true for many of the OTC drugs that have been easy to get for hundreds of years without the collapse of society
> 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.
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I'm not aware that anyone every tried to do it right.
Like how about you have to do a short course which actually explains to you how a drug works, how to use it correctly, what are potential downsides, what are markers of overuse/wrong use.
And the other main issue with opioids and co: some people really have constant / chronic pain.
Do you know how exhaustive it is to constantly have pain? How annoying it is that you can't just go to bed and sleep?
But also we can't play devils advocate to say "you are not allowed to do drugs to num whatever issue you have" and also "but i don't want to take time and effort of helping you".
Oh i don't want you to kill yourself! But i don't want to spend time tomorrow afternoon either with you.
Our society is very hypcritical in this sense. Honestly i think people just don't want to see homeless people or fentapoeple. Its not about helping, its just about not being disturbed by them.
Are you referring to the massive opiate abuse crisis that followed World War One?
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How many died because they were cut of from the supply that they had been told by doctors did not cause addiction?
This is a tired trope but must be made: society has accepted that drugs can be dangerous but we won't stop people from using them -- leading with alcohol and tobacco. Yes, restrict access to youth and avoid reckless advertising, but still the people's choice.
If the drugs are pure, and health problems that occur with abusing them (overdoses and addiction) are treated as health issues rather than criminal issues, then it's all a solvable problem.
Heroin being illegal didn't stop my brother from dying on it.
WTF.
This is complete nonsense.
Opioids have never been made legal for recreational purpose. They were sold as painkillers by pharma corporations lying about their addictive effects and promoted through marketing campaign targeting doctors to prescribe them.
I has nothing to do with the topic of recreational drugs.
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In low doses most hard drugs that are uppers are pretty decent performance enhancing drugs. It's dumb that society can't get energy drinks and stuff with "low enough you can't realistically abuse them because you'll spend too much time going to piss" amounts of cocaine, amphetamines, etc.
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What if they were legal but hard to get? Say, we stop/arresting for possession or use in private, stop giving dealers and producers harsh sentences, but still give them moderate to weak sentences, stop proactively searching for dealers and producers, allow companies to produce with strict KYC, and don't allow retail sale in stores?
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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.
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The US is also currently rerunning this experiment with gambling/sports betting. Also does not seem to turn out so well...
Look at alcohol. How many lives are negatively affected because of alcohol being freely available? By numbers alone when something is legal there are people who will participate who would otherwise never go near it if it were illegal. We're seeing this with weed right now imo.
Because it's legal, people will try it. And because we live in a country where it is celebrated, encouraged, and every holiday seems to be an excuse for folks to get hammered, A LOT of people will try it. How many would never touch it if it were illegal? How many wouldn't drink and drive and kill themselves? How many innocent people in the other car, completely sober, would still be here? Because remember, booze, or drugs in general, impact more than just the user. Their families, friends, and other random people can be impacted. How many kids grow up with a drunk parent, unable to properly express or process emotions, might not have to grow up unable to maintain healthy friendships because they don't know what they look like, or won't be taken advantage of because they have a caretaker/fixer mentality because that's what they had to do as a kid.
We know making booze illegal doesn't work, and that's not what I'm suggesting here. I'm not even suggesting anything. I'm just saying, the blast radius of booze impacts a lot of people beyond the alcoholic, and statistically, a portion of those lives negatively impacted are the direct result of alcohol being legal. I can speak from firsthand experience the impact of an alcoholic single parent growing up, which would be the reason I look at this topic the way I do. Would I have been given a more healthy and "normal" childhood had booze been illegal? Idk. But some kid out there would have, which might be all that matters.
And yet, as the DEA and other agencies tighten distribution of opioids, deaths continue to increase.
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There are 193 countries, plus the Holy See.
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See also Oregon https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/oregons-experiment-wit...
> 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 wind-down of drug abuse policies started around 2008-2010.
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> 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.
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?
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No, policy wise I appreciate you getting into the nuance, but I feel like you take the argument to polar extremes (with an attitude of confident, final certainty), when the expected outcome is across the middle. This smells more like ideology than practicality.
> These discussions always end up …
Before your comment i wouldn’t say anyone is lacking curiosity here. Tho your comment about fixing into a stereotype, seems the example of itself. I think it’s better to listen and discuss than assume the futures settle into a mischaracterization that you’ve already decided. That doesn’t seem very useful - except for ideology…
On the toxicity side, do you have any studies to cite? I wasn’t aware of toxicity, but it’s plausible.
Big picture tho, I’m not an expert in drug policy. It just sounds like a logical way to reduce harm overall. Reduce harm overall - worth repeating; on average, create a better society.
The conceivable parties who would lose out are: government funded agencies charged with fighting drug crime because their caseload and budgets would probably decrease; and on the other side the cartels and dealers. Although what seems to happen with the latter is once something is legalized, the supply chains morph into legitimate businesses somehow.
I still think it would work. I’m not convinced by what you said. Thank you tho
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I've bounced between viewpoints so many times in life regarding legalisation of drugs. It's a fascinating argument.
Something which has always grounded my beliefs is the comparison to alcohol.
Imagine we walked into bars and were presented with unmarked bottle of clear liquid, and had to order "1 alcohol, please!", where the alcohol % and quality of the drink was totally random. It'd be fucking chaos.
I think I've settled on the "drugs should be legal" but heeavvviillyyy regulated and marked. I wouldn't mind going to a bar and ordering a very weak MDMA drink, or going to a shisha cafe with weakened opium, weed, crack, etc.
Also, it seems the way drugs are punished criminally is totally wrong. Why not lock people up for false advertising rather than 'strength'? I.e if you're heavily cutting drugs, you should be strung up for manslaughter. It would put pressure on the manufacturers to label and regulate themselves.
I believe harm reduction is the answer. There are people who will be curious to try substances no matter what you do -- and no matter for what reason.
Here is some of what the US has been doing ever since the "war on drugs" started:
- Ban the sale of such substances, forcing users to resort to the black market.
- Lock up anyone who uses or possesses such substances, training users that there is no help for them.
- Lock up anyone who helps or intends to help anyone else use or possess such substances, training users that there is no helping others.
- Censor information on how to reduce the risks of substance use, forcing users to put themselves in more danger. (Contrary to apparent popular belief, this does not dissuade users, only harm them.)
- Censor information on how to produce or obtain such substances, preventing the discovery of reliable sources.
- Engage in relentless fearmongering about how terrible and bad such substances are, encouraging users to entirely disregard all warnings about substance use.
In my opinion, here is what one should actually do:
- Regulate the production and sale of such substances. Don't force users to resort to the black market.
- Encourage harm reduction and responsibility towards substance use. Don't train users that there is no help for them.
- Warn only of the real risks and concerns about substance use. Don't train users to disregard very real dangers by flooding them with fake ones.
- Offer reliable sources for such substances. Don't force users to resort to dubious leads.
Recent research into psilocybin therapy, for instance, is very exciting. I've been using psychedelics at home for years, and I dream of a world where known quantities and potencies of such things can be reliably sourced over-the-counter for such use. I don't know if I'll live to see the day.
Also note that none of this prevents helping users who genuinely need it -- users with less self-control, for instance, or harmful dependency. But forcing them all into terrible shame, withdrawal and eventually an utterly preventable death, is the same kind of bullshit that looked at building more homes and then invented anti-homeless architecture instead.
> 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 article addresses this:
> Second, the evidence we have is against the idea of contaminants in P2P meth. Almost all meth was produced using P2P since 2012, before most reports of schizophrenia. And P2P meth synthesis has changed several times in the interim, resulting in higher purity than ever before.
Not saying they're right, but the author at least believes this hypothesis is contradicted by the data.
Yeah, I just don’t think that’s very strong. The immediate precursor may not be the issue but the residues of routes to get to that precursor and what that precursor is contaminated with etc. that’s my point.
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 system?
Decrimininalizing drug use is the worst of both worlds: you get more drug access, but it still happens through the illegal system and benefits narco terrorists.
If you don't want to put drug users in jail (you cannot reasonably fine homeless people), you can offer drug courts and diversionary programs.
You need the federal government to do what it did with Marijuana (which is still federally illegal), to be able to try the other choice.
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2020 was famously a period where the pandemic and the opioid crisis were causing death and despair all over the country, but somehow that became the excuse for backpedaling on decriminalization in Oregon before there could have even been effects to study, not to mention before there was time to study those effects. They even recriminalized drugs that have never been associated with overdose or addiction, like psychedelics. Basically, they did the bare minimum necessary to be able to say "we tried it and it didn't work" with a straight face. Don't fall for it.
> I think it’s a contaminant issue that’s exacerbated by the drug use.
I think the various pieces of evidence presented in the article basically all point against this. Is there a reason you think the evidence in the article is flawed?
I don’t take the article as authoritative. It’s argument against contamination is not strong. It doesn’t present any real evidence for it. You can elaborate if you like
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Do you have any memories that you cannot let go of? That play back in your head incessantly every single day without fail? That obsess nearly every waking moment? For addicts, that memory is the dopamine release of being high, and it definitely can happen after a single use. It doesn’t impress everyone in the same way, but for those who are vulnerable to it, it becomes nearly the only thought they can have until they scratch that itch. I used to think just like you, but after dealing with and truly understanding addiction in people close to me, I can never support legalization of certain super-addictive drugs. There is no one deserving of the torment that addicts are cursed with. We should try to ensure less people, not more, are ever introduced to it.
Hmm, i get why you’d reach that conclusion with your experience, but i dispute that given the same experience only that conclusion is valid.
The “super addict edge case” is a problem but the good of the many outweighs the good of the few. Don’t discard, but manage. I believe access to drugs should be psych/(genetic if reliable)/“allergy type”/behavior tested. I won’t give you salvia if you will flip out per tests, but if you’re okay, you’re green.
The advantage of state controlled access is that you can actually achieve that, in theory. Promoting the thing you’re against rn might actually help reduce the harm you want to remove.
Government does sorta regulate it. Desoxyn is (rarely) prescribed for ADHD when other meds aren't effective enough.
The difference between most amphetamines and Desoxyn is that extra methyl group. That methyl group helps it cross the blood-brain barrier a little faster but the chemical that reaches the brain is the same in both cases.
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> The government should just regulate it, control purity and production and let people access small amounts for recreation/performance.
The thing is, drugs are addictive. ESPECIALLY meth. How would you prevent people from just getting as much as they want and then becoming drug zombies? Fentanyl is similar. Cartels perfected its production, so now it's pure and widely available.
It's even worse than meth in some regards. Once you start using fentanyl, you're going to become a hardened addict. And there will be almost no hope of recovery, the success rate of drug rehab treatments is in single-digit percentages.
I guess the idea is that people will just keep using "safer" drugs like cocaine instead? I'm not sure it's working, we legalized cannabis and it made zero difference.
The main idea indeed is usually "channeling consumption" to less harmful substances, dosages/concentrations and outlets.
A prime example is alcohol, where prohibition led to bad outcomes. This led to the regulated legalization model.
E.g. in some Nordic countries hard liquor is still only available in government stores and licensed restaurants, with exactly this logic. Not long ago bars could serve only one "unit" of alcohol at a time. Longer ago there were limits to how much alcohol one could buy in a week.
> I guess the idea is that people will just keep using "safer" drugs like cocaine instead? I'm not sure it's working, we legalized cannabis and it made zero difference.
Cannabis and cocaine are very different kinds of substances with very different uses and audiences. Expecting legalized cannabis to substantially reduce cocaine use is like expecting banning of coffee would substantially increase alcohol consumption. There can be some minor effects due to multiple illegal substances tending to have the same outlets, but this is likely a subtle at best.
Also how much more "safe" cocaine is from methamphetamine is not that clear. Probably the largest effect is from very different demographics of methamphetamine vs cocaine users.
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Drugs are not addictive in a sense that they make person to go out and buy more. The only thing about drugs is that they are the best thing in that person’s life at the moment. Blaming drugs is as outdated as blaming npm package for vulnerability that some bad actor pushed into it.
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I have a wild idea. Why not spend that money on providing good mental health and rehabilitation services instead?
I have multiple close family members who have struggled badly with drug and alcohol abuse. Good treatment is the way, not the government handing out drugs.
All the mental health treatment and resiliance training in the world isn't going to address root societal causes
Except when psychedelics are a part of the good treatment.
It's a pretty bad drug, I can see only disadvantages over plain amphetamine.
If amphetamine isn't strong enough, you already have a serious problem.
I'm not saying that criminalization is the right way, just that I don't see a responsible recreational/performance use for methamphetamine. It's too strong and too toxic. The regulation should permit only use for addiction management imho.
Also, the long history is not exactly in its favor, given how the Nazis extensively used it and Hitler was probably a serious meth-junkie.
> It's a pretty bad drug, I can see only disadvantages over plain amphetamine.
The main "advantage" is probably the smoking RoA of methamphetamine. The RoA difference is likely a larger factor in methamphetamine vs plain amphetamine effects than the pharmacology of the molecule.
Not saying the risk profiles are the same, but some of the perception of different danger might be psychosocial normative informed by the differing criminalization. Plausible at least no? Important to keep that in mind.
Does history record whether Hitler was using the good ol' giggles-and-joy pseudoephedrine meth or the evil psychosis-inducing P2P biker meth?
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Regular amphetamine (speed) is relatively okay as long as you’re not one of the people who’s wired to absolutely love it and develop a problem with it.
Meth on the other hand really is quite nasty, it’s directly neurotoxic to dopamine neurons in a way that regular speed isn’t
Interesting. Any studies that slam dunk it?
Yes, i majored in chemistry.
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Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. "Go read this book" ain't it.
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Except that you fail to mention that amphetamine abuse is strongly associated with Parkinson's and other neurological diseases, which are serious public health burdens, and likely contribute to the phenomena of high personal tax regions like the EU.
Yeah i didn’t know that. I guess tho with regulated supply we have more chance to handle abuse and addiction.
The craziness of so many legal things being pretty bad for health is also something worth addressing (alcohol, cigarettes).
And I thought for a second they were talking about peer to peer meth but no that's what the DEA shut down by tightly controlling pseudoephedrine, where before meth using meth makers were making meth and distributing it.
It certainly seems like prohibition is just making things worse and making it more lucrative for the least ethical of black market producers.
Similar situation with fentanyl when compared to previous opiates.
> that's what the DEA shut down by tightly controlling pseudoephedrine, where before meth using meth makers were making meth and distributing it.
Phosphorus-ephedrine meth, aka shake-and-bake.
> It certainly seems like prohibition is just making things worse and making it more lucrative for the least ethical of black market producers.
I don't think P2P meth is any worse than what came before it. Prohibition is making things somewhat worse here for legal access to pseudoephedrine, though.
Ha, funny. I thought it must be “p2p mesh” network architecture at first, then checked the comments and was like “oh p2p distributed meth?” Like you, hahaha
I thought it was going to be metaphor about exploiting a peer to peer network
Almost like the war on drugs is making my community a WORSE place to live!!!
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 problem because the probable answer is staring us in the face, but still, he only has a plausible hypothesis.
If Sam Quinones is correct in that there is a fundamental difference in meth then and now that is causing major issues for addicts, it would certainly be in society's interest to figure that out and rectify it.
The author points out a synthesis route that includes lead in a reducing agent, and I think that other routes also depend on reducing agents that contain mercury (aluminum amalgam). Heavy metal exposure is cumulative, so even small amounts over a long time could be significant. They also disrupt the same dopaminergic system that heavy doses of stimulants disrupt, so the effects could be hard to find if we only look at the population that uses illicit stimulants.
Heavy disclaimer: I am neither a chemist nor a doctor, so this is speculation on my part.
Yes, if there are multiplicative effects from the different disruptors, that could certainly have a large effect.
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rectify it how? the only thing society is really good at with regards to drugs is prohibition. you can’t impose regulations on an unregulated market
> the only thing society is really good at with regards to drugs is prohibition.
Really? Seems to me that, in general, we suck at it.
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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 was totally cool if dealing and public use were normalized/decriminalized in areas their most vulnerable populations hang out.
(3) is an incredibly stupid and expensive policy given (1) and (2)
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.
Are you fairly confident that they’re missing teeth because of drug use? Could it alternatively be caused by lack of access to proper dental care?
>there are no drug task forces
What is this going to fix exactly?
Putting half the population in jail?
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?
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Discussed at the time:
The main thing about Phenylacetone meth is that there's so much of it - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29027284 - Oct 2021 (359 comments)
>..What evidence is there that these have a chemical difference?
3 lines later..
>.. The Drug Enforcement Agency tests the meth they seize to see how it was made.
quick answer!
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" is examining the manufacturing facilities. I think LE has some understanding of the flow of precursor into foreign manufacturing facilities, and this has become a common hot topic issue in international trade.
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>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 both cases while the capitalism model of responding with supply seems to work very well only in one.
> 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.
In the former case, you have government artificially suppressing supply and acting to dissuade pharmacies from keeping almost any extra stock, which is unfortunate.
Is there really a shortage of ADHD medications? As in we cannot synthesize and distribute them?
Ephedrine isn't banned, not even behind a prescription, there's just rather strict limits on how much you can buy a month. I take a Bronkaid every morning with my coffee.
I have to ask, why are you consuming (pseudo?)ephedrine every morning?
Losing 5 pounds a month, 20 down and 10 to go.
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I keep it on hand for when I don't have access to albuterol but I am having trouble sleeping because of wheezing.
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 and give ID.
Throwback to A Simple and Convenient Synthesis of Pseudoephedrine From N-Methylamphetamine [0] [1], a 2012 paper describing how to synthesize Sudafed from meth lol
[0] https://improbable.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Pseudoephe...
[1] https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/pseudephedrine-mad...
Human society has a massive issue with blindness towards n-order effects (they barely consider second-order effects, never mind thinking further out)
I don't think its innate though - most people I've met can think of higher order consequences or at least understand them.
The real issue is actually measuring results. I think we have to design society to factor higher order effects in. That means a fundamentally new approach to things like voting and tracking accountability.
Is it even possible? Who knows. Sometimes I think our problems have outstripped individual life spans which makes them intractable.
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That's all correct, and nobody seems to care. Nobody is ever going to improve the system, and us law abiding citizens are left with the consequences.
> 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.
> insanely ineffective banning pseudoephedrine
Limiting pseudoephedrine need not have effect on overall quantity to have huge positive societal effects. More P2P in industrial laboratories means less DIY Birch reductions in a soda bottle.
The other day I needed pseudoephedrine, so I asked for one box of instant tablets and one box of extended release capsules. The store said they’re only allowed to sell me one box so I had to choose.
I’m so glad these policies made it so meth isn’t super easy to find anymore.
Oh wait, meth is still dirt cheap fucking everywhere, but now I also can’t get effective cold medicine either. Can we please just admit this policy doesn’t have any effect on the meth supply curve and please put pseudoephedrine back in Dayquil?
https://improbable.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Pseudoephe...
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Sometime when you don't need it, pick up a box of whichever kind of sudafed you need to have a stock of both extended/regular.
d-meth being the desirable one (leaving l-meth undesirable) matches up with my anecdotal experience with adderall, which is approximately equal parts d-amphetamine and l-amphetamine -- it's not quite methamphetamine, but it's closely related.
I was given some by prescription for ADHD, and when I first tried it, it completely destroyed me for some reason -- I could not seem to get myself out of bed to eat (or do much of anything), even when I was very hungry. I ended up having to sleep it off, because being awake for that was very distressing -- not only did it not help me, but it seemed it had caused me even greater executive dysfunction.
When I brought this up at my next appointment, I was prescribed pure d-amph to try next. This actually helped me a lot, and continues to help me to this day.
I can only guess that the l-amph was the problem with the adderall that day. While my body seems to also have issues with different brands of d-amph, they're more like heart issues rather than executive function issues.
The insane thing for me is seeing how tightly meth purity correlated with the airing of Breaking Bad.
It's not insane, and it's the other way around. The writers consulted directly with DEA agents, they were being told how the meth trade was changing and wrote reality into their show.
Pseudoephedrine restrictions drove the search for new chemistry and the new chemistry brought in the large scale labs.
I was thinking the same thing, though I couldn't remember the timeline. Makes me wonder if there was something already in the zeitgeist, or if it was fueled by the obsession with purity in the series. I could totally see Breaking Bad causing chemists to want to up their game, or causing chemists to get clowned for having low purity.
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.
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Was "Interstate 60" scenario every seriously considered for dealing with drug use problems? I think it could make both parties happy, drug users would disappear from cities and they would have unlimited amount of drugs in their utopia.
The US in general would probably benefit greatly from delineating regions and having different sets of laws. The resulting ability to self segregate according to ideology would presumably reduce political conflict.
We could call the regions "states" and enshrine their right to self government in the constitution. You know, to make sure the federal government doesn't end up trampling on it at some point in the far future.
This article unintentionally illustrates why chatgpt/gemini guardrails totally fail: it will happily explain you synthesis steps.
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.
This article explores whether P2P meth is more likely to cause schizophrenia than Ephedrine meth and does so in a very methodical and data - driven manner. However, the very basis of all of this is non existent. He presents zero evidence that meth users now have a higher rate of schizophrenia and only refers to an anecdotal statement by one guy. Seems like a lot of effort to go through before even exploring if the claim is legitimate.
There is a correlation between P2P meth and increased occurrences of meth psychosis that should be studied. It's a pretty consistent phenomenon
even the high potent weed being sold these days.
> Ephedrine meth was like a party drug. […] You could normally kind of more or less hang onto your life. You had a house, you had a job. […] P2P meth was nothing like that. It was a very sinister drug. It brought you inside. You didn’t want to be around other people. You wanted to just kind of be alone with whatever bizarre thoughts your mind was now cooking up, and conspiracies. That sounds a lot like the progression of many stimulant addictions.
In the gay community it brings groups of guys into a mutual spiral of addiction and weirdly long sexual practices. They feel like they’re having the best time at first until they are isolated and completely chemically addicted. I’ve lost a friend and many acquaintances this way.
All it takes is one party where your friends “molly” is not so pure and you’re high for 18 hours straight. “Let’s do that again next week” turns into “all weekend” turns into “all the time”
> That sounds a lot like the progression of many stimulant addictions.
Precisely.
The article links the Rhodium site archive, which hosts recipes and chemistry lab setup for making P2P precursor and the real stuff
Very enjoyable and informative site, kudos to the author on many good posts. A nice discovery
“Old school biker meth” - Hank Schrader
Is the P2P meth E2E
Heisenberg lives? The king of P2P with 99% purity.
P2P stands for Peer-to-Peer.
Now I can't say that I led a P2P network anymore.
ATM I'm at the MTB ATM, withdrawing cash to buy an MTB, the tires of which I will fill to 1.7 ATM.
Tried clicking the fivethirtyeight link halfway down the article, and was immediately reminded of what abc decided to start doing today. What an asshole move.
What are you referring to?
ABC deleted all the old 538 archives and refused to entertain selling the IP back to Nate Silver and prefer to let it die.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48152553
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Happy to see that meth is becoming more affortable, maybe inflation isn't so bad after all if we consider all the things we have access to and that have come down in price since few decades ago. /s
Inflation getting you down? Combat it with meth, so you can Cram More Time into Each Second (TM).
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