Sciencemadness Discussion Board - Allstar Lab?

Allstar Lab?

497 - 24-8-2008 at 21:11

This is very strange, a supplier that sells only the following chemicals: 1,4 butanediol, toluene, and formaldehyde in small to quite large quantities, all quite overpriced. Also a few scales and bottles. What is going on here? My first thought was drug precoursers, but toluene and formaldehyde are both easy to get locally. 1,4 butanediol is apparently a (very toxic) prodrug to GHB, but is not scheduled as of yet, so it doesn't seem likely to be setup as a trap. Maybe there is enough of a market for it as a drug that they can survive on selling it alone? Maybe it is a new outfit that hasn't added more products yet? Doesn't seem likely...

pantone159 - 25-8-2008 at 05:22

I would be very suspicious of a supplier that offered 1,4-butanediol as one of very few chemicals. I know it isn't DEA listed (yet), but I suspect that it is very carefully watched.

IrC - 25-8-2008 at 15:55

I was getting ready to make a gold prospecting trip up above the grand canyon and needed to get a few chemicals for my mineral testing kit. Remembering this white building on the east side of Phoenix on Thomas, I proceeded in there to see if I could fill my list. After a while looking around I came to the conclusion they had only one item on my list. I asked the guy if he had any items on my list (showing it to him). He only had the one. So I looked around and said how the hell can a chemical supply have no typical items used in inorganic chemistry? All you have is a bunch of drug making organics! He shrugged and said sorry, so I left. A few days later this guy comes up to my house wearing this cross between a califorinia surfer and a miami vice wanna be outfit. He went into this big long spiel of how he wanted my help to make 20K worth of crack. Being the very early 80's I had never heard the term crack and decided to humor the guy a while to see what he was all about. After a while he started getting paranoid when I picked up one of my submachine guns and started cleaning it very slowly. I proceeded to tell him that getting busted would ruin my ability to ever invent and patent anything. Then he started in on "maybe I can invest in your idea?". As time went on he was getting more and more agitated, saying he needed to leave but before I did possibly I had any recipes I could give him?

At the time it still had not clicked in my head to ask him how he came to be at my door in the first place. Having never been involved in illegal drug making, cops, and the like, my mind just was not crisp enough on the subject of cops trapping and so on. Later on I came to the realization that the only way he could have known who I was or where I was had to involve taking my plate number off my car the day I was at the supply house and running the numbers. Also it came to me that while he had given up on getting me involved in his idea, he was as a last ditch attempt at wrecking my life, trying to involve me in conspiracy by talking me into giving him any recipes. Lucky me I did not have any to give or who knows. All in all a real learning experience that even if you are nothing more than a lone mad scientist/inventor you still have to walk a fine line carefully and be aware at all times.

crunkgotti - 11-3-2009 at 19:16

has anyone had any experience with this company. I contacted them regarding the legality of 1,4 in my area and they stated it was perfectly legal as long as used for intended purpose and that they have shipped there before. Any thoughts?

Sedit - 11-3-2009 at 19:23

crunk... did you not read the post above by IrC or has the drugs clogged up your neurons? Let me guess you want GBL for body building right?

Sandmeyer - 13-3-2009 at 15:35

Quote:

Originally posted by 497
1,4 butanediol is apparently a (very toxic) prodrug to GHB,

What do you meen "very toxic"? You can even consume quite high amounts of it without any toxic effects. How many other chemicals in the lab (that aren't proteinogenic amino acids) can you eat in gram amounts repetedly without adverse effects? Not many.

JohnWW - 13-3-2009 at 16:28

Quote:

Originally posted by 497This is very strange, a supplier that sells only the following chemicals: 1,4 butanediol, toluene, and formaldehyde in small to quite large quantities, all quite overpriced. Also a few scales and bottles. What is going on here? My first thought was drug precursers, but toluene and formaldehyde are both easy to get locally. 1,4 butanediol is apparently a (very toxic) prodrug to GHB, but is not scheduled as of yet, so it doesn't seem likely to be setup as a trap.(cut)

1,4-n-butanediol may still be unrestricted in the U$A, but it was classified as a class C controled drug here in New Zealand about 4 or 5 years ago, because of its being a metabolic precursor to GHB (gamma-Hydroxybutyric acid, or 4-hydroxybutanoic acid) which is used as a "party drug" to get high. This was in spite of its effects being not too dissimilar to ethanol as a drug, and its being of use as an industrial solvent less volatile than ethanol or methanol or isopropanol. One chap, named McNee, who was actively selling the stuff, had his stock of it confiscated by the Pigs when the stupid new law against it commenced. A couple of years ago, a group of people were prosecuted by the Pigs for importing four 44-gallon drums of it into New Zealand, labeled as some legal solvent (which got it through Customs).

Banning 1,4-n-butanediol is ridiculous, because the stuff is fairly easily made using over-the-counter reagents. In its industrial synthesis, acetylene is reacted with two equivalents of formaldehyde to form 1,4-butynediol, also known as but-2-yne-1,4-diol. This type of process is illustrative of what is known as Reppe Chemistry. Hydrogenation of 1,4-butynediol then gives 1,4-butanediol. It can also be manufactured on an industrial scale by the vapour phase hydrogenation of the esters and anhydrides of maleic acid and succinic acid. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1,4-Butanediol and http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/14b/14b.shtml for further info.

On a laboratory scale, it could probably be made by the alkaline hydrolysis of 1,4-dichloro-n-butane, or 1,.4-dibromo-n-butane, unrestricted chemicals available from sources such as http://www.made-in-china.com/showroom/sunny810203/offer-deta... . This would be reacted with NaOH in aqueous ethanol, a SN2 nucleophilic reaction.

PainKilla - 13-3-2009 at 18:33

That seems pretty unlikely to me. You are more likely to get cyclization after one round of Sn2 (THF); why not proceed via the acetate and hydrolyze? Not that that is on topic...

JohnWW - 13-3-2009 at 21:04

THF is made, in one method, by the dehydration of 1,4-butanediol, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrahydrofuran ; so that laboratory hydrolysis of the 1,4-dihalide would result in cyclization to THF only under dehydrating conditions, which would involve excessive heating and the use of some anhydrous solvent other than the aqueous ethanol. THF could probably, on the contrary, be used as an intermediate in the laboratory synthesis of 1,4-butanediol, by a suitable ether-cleavage reaction, particularly that with a strong aqueous alkali (use of an halo-acid results in an alkyl halide).

497 - 14-3-2009 at 00:30

Quote:

I meant in the context of recreational drugs. Not lab reagents. And at the time I wrote that post I had only done a short bit of research on it, and found various sites with all kinds of (mainly anecdotal) stuff about it being substantially more detrimental compared to GHB. So I suppose "very toxic" was not quite the right phrase.

[Edited on 13-3-2009 by 497]

Sauron - 14-3-2009 at 03:22

You may recall that the reason given to and by the media for the much publicized 600+ home and commercial labs raided simultaneously in four major European countries in and out of the EU was iolicit manufacture of GBL/GHB. While GBL itself is the most diverted industrial chemical for this purpose, THF and 1,4-BDO are very close behind.

You will find toluene on the DEA List 2.

So this could indeed be a sting or at least an intelligence gathering op in advance of a crackdown. Remember, Hill & Bill are now back in the In Crowd and Hill is the one who got GHB schedules as a date rape drug along with rohypnol, it is part of her feminazzi agenda.

Sandmeyer - 14-3-2009 at 05:01

Reading words like "USA" and "EU" brings up nostalgia, are these things still around and if so - in what museum?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytYkEtx_v1E

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwfRz8eOZaA

Sauron - 14-3-2009 at 05:18

Considering that one of our members (at least) was among the raided, I think he would consider those entities as being rather far from extinct, sandmeyer.

And by the way, fuck YouTube.

JohnWW - 14-3-2009 at 20:47

P.S. Another possible laboratory-scale synthesis of 1,4-n-butanediol would be by the reduction of succinic acid, HOOC-CH2-CH2-COOH, also an over-the-counter organic reagent, with LiAlH4 in diethyl ether, followed by the addition of water which hydrolyses the lithium organoaluminate salt initially produced. The addition of water in the second step should also prevent dehydration to tetrahydrofuran.

497 - 14-3-2009 at 22:37

I'll make sure to roll on down to the corner store and buy a bottle of LiAlH4 while I'm at it...

Sauron - 14-3-2009 at 23:25

Fortunately LAH is not the only possible means of effecting the reduction of a dicarboxylic acid to a glycol.

Ebao-lu - 15-3-2009 at 01:57

I know one similar supplier(a webstore) in my area. They have a great variety of chemicals, and suspiciously cheap. Among them they have only 1,4-butanediol avaliable, all other items are just for imitating a real supplier.

[Edited on 15-3-2009 by Ebao-lu]