Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Research to find an alternative to pseudoephedrine, and totally ban sudafed

Cou - 7-4-2016 at 12:55

Right now, the current method of stopping meth production is limiting sudafed purchases, and the DEA regulating useful workhorse chemicals such as sulfuric acid and hydrochloric acid and acetic anhydride, to make sure that some curious fellow doesn't try to make his own batch of meth from a box of sudafed.

It would be far better for amateur chemists if sudafed was completely banned, which immediately makes meth production impractical for the trailer home kooks who just want to make one batch for themselves. This also allows the deregulation of chemicals in the DEA list 2, as well at red phosphorus and iodine. If anyone is determined and skilled enough to make meth from the P2P route, they likely have the capability to make precursor reagents as well, regardless of their banning.

Problem is that there is no known alternative compounds that's as effect as pseudoephedrine in treating a cold. Considering how much the DEA and war on drugs wants sudafed gone, it's not gone, which really says something... The home chemistry society should work together to discover an alternative!

[Edited on 7-4-2016 by Cou]

Darkstar - 7-4-2016 at 13:11

The vast majority of meth in the United States is produced by Mexican cartels using diverted shipments of pseudoephedrine, not by small-scale domestic cooks. Banning d-pseudoephedrine and l-ephedrine in the US would probably remove less than 20% of all illicit methamphetamine on the streets.

Besides, the pharmaceutical companies make way too much money selling pseudoephedrine to meth cooks for it to ever be banned. There's a reason these same companies were also up in arms when pseudoephedrine was taken off the shelves and put behind the counter and its sales limited not too long ago.

aga - 7-4-2016 at 13:12

.. aaaaaaaand ... it's Cou again.

Please, please Do something in Chemistry other than speculation.

Fuckit.

I had better do some basic chem with photos, calcs, writeup etc before this is All of SM.

ziqquratu - 7-4-2016 at 17:01

Cou, hate to tell you this, but it's actually pretty tough to develop a drug. There are thousands of medicinal chemists working in pharmaceutical companies, universities, government labs and other private institutions all around the world. Every day these people (all with years of training and many with decades of experience) churn out some large number of new compounds (heck, let's say one a week each - that's thousands per week. And I can usually do better than one new compound per week), based on a variety of sources - lead compounds discovered in high-throughput screening of libraries containing hundreds of thousands of compounds; compounds isolated from natural sources like plants or marine snails or bacteria; computer modelling of cellular receptors; or just hunches based on extensive experience in their fields. And yet, each year, only a few tens of compounds become approved drugs. Most medicinal chemists will probably never work on a project which results in an approved drug; almost none of them will be the ones to synthesise a compound which eventually gets approved. With all that in mind, may I suggest you take a look through the SM archives and count up how many compounds (most of which are already known in the literature and well characterised) have been prepared by every member of SM combined over the last 14 years - I'll even let you count where two different members prepared the same compound by the same method, if you like - and see how close you get to the number needed to have even a reasonable expectation of success even if every one of them was novel?

Now, of course, that's not an entirely fair statement - some ideas are better than others, some targets easier to hit, many of those new compounds are little more than slight tweaks to existing ones, sometimes known compounds are found to have unknown properties, and ultimately some compounds do end up as approved drugs. But it certainly demonstrates a large degree of hubris to suggest that we could just "work together to discover an alternative". I mean, just with respect to pseudoephedrine - there are a hell of a lot of adrenoceptor agonists out there, because the adrenergic system (peripherally, at least) is one of the best and longest studied pharmacological targets, many compounds with adrenergic activity have been thoroughly investigated, and there are many approved drugs targeting the system in various ways. But, as yet, pseudoephedrine has not been effectively replaced by any of those compounds, despite the strong political motivations (in addition to the normal medical and financial ones) for doing so.

Personally, I worked on (very early stage) drug discovery during my PhD - with a very well characterised system and promising preliminary results from our leads, and our compounds failed miserably because we simply could not make compounds which had the necessary affinity for our target. I spent thousands of hours making compounds, starting from a good position, that didn't bind their target well enough to bother even investigating any other pharmacological properties - let alone even dreaming of putting them into animal studies! To add insult to injury, the bar for success in the area I was working - diagnostics - is remarkably low, because they're generally given as a one-off, very low dose in a carefully monitored environment, so toxicology and so forth is much more forgiving as compared with a drug where millions of doses will be self-prescribed by sick people every single day...

Don't let me discourage you - if you want to find a replacement for pseudoephedrine, go right ahead and give it your best damned shot! There's a large and willing market that would jump all over it! Just be realistic about it - you need a heck of a lot more than just an idea of what is needed (i.e. a replacement drug) and a whole lot of optimism to develop a new drug.

---

Darkstar, I have to ask you... you say that banning pseudoephedrine would make bugger all difference to the amount of meth in the States (I agree, and would say that I think your 20% estimate is way too high - in fact, I would suspect that the change, given a few months for suppliers to adjust, would be, at best, in the number of meth labs, not in the amount of meth available). But then you follow this by claiming that "pharmaceutical companies make way too much money selling pseudoephedrine to meth cooks for it to ever be banned". Surely these two statements are contradictory! According to this "pro-ban" article, $300 million are unaccounted for after the "average" sales to legitimate patients (I think those numbers are likely bogus, but I've not time to check further and I'd rather overestimate the amount that meth cooks are contributing than underestimate). There are many companies selling those products, so that $300 million - spread between them - is pocket change to companies with revenues in the tens of billions of dollars!

Furthermore, just because pharmaceutical companies make lots of money off a product doesn't mean it won't be banned - many profitable drugs have been taken off the market (Vioxx, for example, brought Merck $2.5 billion in revenue just in the one year prior to its voluntary withdrawal from the market!).

Sure, companies are going to fight restrictions being placed on their products - the purpose of a company is to care about profits! And putting a drug behind the counter will almost certainly have an effect on sales to legitimate customers (whether or not it affects the dodgy ones). I mean, it's harder to get - you have to go to the pharmacy rather than picking it up at the supermarket, you have to wait for and justify yourself to the pharmacist instead of just grabbing it off the shelf, you might have to hand over your ID and wait for them to check that - so legitimate users face a disincentive to buying it, and of course the sellers of the product are going to complain about new restrictions on sales (particularly when they almost certainly know, better than you or I, how little overall effect those restrictions will have on the availability of meth). But that doesn't mean that Big PharmaTM controls the government such that they can make sure pseudoephedrine will never be banned! If someone comes up with a viable alternative drug, you can bet your backside that a "tough on drugs" politician will be up there making sure it happens (and the majority of politicians, not wanting to look soft on drugs - meth in particular - will go right along with that). After all, they haven't been shy about restricting sales without a good alternative - why do you think they'd hold back from outright banning it (as ephedrine was banned) if something was developed which could actually replace it?

JJay - 7-4-2016 at 17:30

I do believe that banning ephedrine and pseudoephedrine would have measureable impact on the supply of methamphetamine, but I suspect that the impact would be short-lived. Unless equal or better replacement drugs are available to the public, I don't think banning pseudoephedrine is a good idea.

j_sum1 - 7-4-2016 at 17:41

@aga
In Cou's defense, he is asking higher quality questions than he was a while ago. He has, I believe, taken some steps to purchasing some glassware so that he can have a properly set up lab. And he has been doing some work on isolating some acetyl salicylate from aspirin. Cut him a little slack.

NedsHead - 7-4-2016 at 18:16

Pseudoephedrine is practically inaccessible in Australia yet it hasn’t done anything to stop meth cooks, all it has done is remove a proven and effective medication from sick people (like me occasionally) who benefit from it, sudafed has been replaced with "Sudafed p.e" an ineffective substitute that should never have passed the clinical trial phase, I'm pretty sure the p.e stands for placebo effect, in fact, I don't think there’s anything left on the "chemists" shelves that isn’t just a herbal placebo.

Maybe I should reverse engineer some meth back to pseudoephedrine so I can get some relief the next time I'm ill, do you think the police will believe me if I'm caught buying the meth? haha

[Edited on 8-4-2016 by NedsHead]

Darkstar - 7-4-2016 at 19:21

Quote: Originally posted by ziqquratu  
But that doesn't mean that Big PharmaTM controls the government such that they can make sure pseudoephedrine will never be banned! If someone comes up with a viable alternative drug, you can bet your backside that a "tough on drugs" politician will be up there making sure it happens (and the majority of politicians, not wanting to look soft on drugs - meth in particular - will go right along with that).


Perhaps, but you also have to admit that there's a bit of a conflict of interest when Big Pharma just so happens to be making rather large campaign donations to many of those very politicians. And then there's also the fact that the DEA has become little more than a for-profit policing agency, particularly since they get to keep all of the money they seize in their drug raids. If that's not an incentive to make sure there's always a steady supply of illegal drugs being trafficked into and within the United States, I don't know what is. It's no coincidence that they tend to focus more on which busts can yield the most money recovered rather than which ones can yield the most drugs recovered. Which is precisely why the DEA is so against marijuana legalization, and tends to focus the majority of its efforts and resources on marijuana busts and not the more dangerous drugs like cocaine, prescription opiates, methamphetamine, heroin etc.

The vast majority of the DEA's revenue is generated from busts involving organized marijuana trafficking across the Mexican-US border, so it's no surprise then that the vast majority of its budget also happens to be spent on marijuana eradication programs. The DEA is a large agency that employs over 10,000 people, so it would be in their best interest to keep highly profitable drugs like marijuana Schedule I, regardless of what doctor after doctor and study after study say about its effects and safety. Why would an agency that employs that many people, an agency whose main source of revenue is generated through marijuana busts, get rid of their cash cow? How many of their employees would they have to let go if the illegal marijuana trade that many of their employee's jobs depend on disappeared over night?

And it's for this very reason that I don't ever see the DEA completely banning pseudoephedrine. You can't deny that there's a pretty significant conflict of interest when a profitable organization's entire existence depends upon the continued existence of the very thing it claims to want to eradicate.

ziqquratu - 7-4-2016 at 20:01

Quote: Originally posted by NedsHead  
Pseudoephedrine is practically inaccessible in Australia yet it hasn’t done anything to stop meth cooks, all it has done is remove a proven and effective medication from sick people (like me occasionally) who benefit from it, sudafed has been replaced with "Sudafed p.e" an ineffective substitute that should never have passed the clinical trial phase, I'm pretty sure the p.e stands for placebo effect, in fact, I don't think there’s anything left on the "chemists" shelves that isn’t just a herbal placebo.

Maybe I should reverse engineer some meth back to pseudoephedrine so I can get some relief the next time I'm ill, do you think the police will believe me if I'm caught buying the meth? haha

[Edited on 8-4-2016 by NedsHead]


Ned, if you've not seen it, check out this article - "A Simple and Convenient Synthesis of Pseudoephedrine From N-Methylamphetamine", by O. Hai and I. B. Hakkenshit...

I also agree with you regarding the annoyance of getting pseudoephedrine-based medicines in Australia (although, I will say, most pharmacies around me don't argue when you specifically ask for what you want - although I have seen one reasonably unwell looking guy [who went on to buy the phenylephrine product, further suggesting he was actually unwell rather than just faking] refused because he'd "bought too much recently"), and with phenylephrine's lack of efficacy. And don't even get me started on the vast range of magic potions that they all insist on selling...

---

Darkstar, please let me be clear - I don't for a second deny that corruption exists, or that campaign donations have an impact on politicians' actions. I agree that there's a big problem with placing an issue which is at least partly medical almost entirely in the hands of the criminal justice system, and recognise the significant conflict of interest inherent in a system where the DEA (or whoever) benefits directly from a bust that they pull off. I also agree that special interest groups do have a major hold on various political candidates and parties, which cripples their ability to modify their positions on various issues. But that doesn't mean I agree that some entity (Big Pharma, the DEA, or whatever other special interest group) can actually control the government to the point that pseudoephedrine would never be made illegal.

First off, you kind of undermine your own argument. You state that "the DEA is so against marijuana legalization" because that's where they make their money; and yet, many states in the US are legalising (or at least decriminalising) marijuana. Don't get me wrong - the DEA is almost certainly contributing to how slowly the change is taking place - but they clearly aren't able to completely prevent it from happening, because it is happening. Likewise, as in the Vioxx example I gave, just because Merck was making gobs of money didn't mean that the product wasn't removed from the market (and the same is true of all the other drugs listed on the Wiki page I linked).

In addition, the DEA doesn't have to be the ones to ban pseudoephedrine - as a therapeutic drug, that decision would probably fall to the FDA. Certainly the DEA could lobby in favour if it, but I'm not sure if they even have the authority to outlaw (as opposed to restrict and monitor sales of) a drug which is approved by the FDA for medical purposes.

Beyond that, however, this type of statement ("the DEA makes too much money for it ever to be banned") always strikes me as problematic. "The DEA" is not some monolithic entity which exists only to secure funding to ensure its continuing existence. It's a bunch of people, most of whom aren't that different from you or I, and the majority of whom think that they're doing something valuable - protecting the public, saving lives, and so on. Now perverse incentives can easily arise - they do have a vested interest in keeping their jobs, and thus in securing enough funding, and (under the system you describe) in seeking out the most lucrative busts. But that doesn't mean they're against legalisation of marijuana (or other drugs) because they want the money - you probably don't join the DEA unless you think drugs are a bad thing, and so I think it's more reasonable to assume that DEA agents are probably against marijuana legalisation because they think marijuana is bad, and who see the revenue from those busts not as job security but as the recognition of a well-done job, and funding for doing more good work in the future.

As always, some bad apples and so on, but when you look at the DEA as a bunch of people who think they're doing good, rather than some big scary entity, I think that the "people trying to do the right thing the best way they know how" is a far more likely explanation than "dodgy bastards trying to keep everyone down just so they're not out of a job".

macckone - 7-4-2016 at 20:28

I will quote a dea agent "we go after local growers because they don't shoot at us."

semesa - 7-4-2016 at 22:26

Quote: Originally posted by macckone  
I will quote a dea agent "we go after local growers because they don't shoot at us."


Somehow I think the issue of jurisdiction and international borders is a significantly larger factor in the decision.


As an aside, isn't (pseudo)ephedrine meant to be a fairly important ligand for asymmetric synthesis? I think that alone precludes it from the higher scheduling(potential for abuse with no legitimate uses?)

clearly_not_atara - 11-4-2016 at 11:45

Not only is "chemistry" not even a close approximation to "drug development", there's a fundamental misunderstanding here about pseudoephedrine:

It's not the only chemical that treats colds.

It's not even the best, nor is it the cheapest.

It's off-patent.

See the problem? By inventing something "new", it becomes patentable, which means it becomes expensive, which means it doesn't compete with pseudoephedrine. The whole enterprise is doomed by design from the start.
Quote:
As an aside, isn't (pseudo)ephedrine meant to be a fairly important ligand for asymmetric synthesis? I think that alone precludes it from the higher scheduling(potential for abuse with no legitimate uses?)


Ephedrine alkoxides (i.e. deprotonated ephedrines) are good asymmetric bases for e.g. enantioselective dehydrohalogenation. I dunno about "ligand", but it is useful. Amphetamine itself can be kinda useful.

[Edited on 11-4-2016 by clearly_not_atara]

unionised - 11-4-2016 at 12:04

If we somehow managed to remove all the meth from the market people would just choose to get off their heads on something else; speed would be the obvious candidate but it's not really important what they would use.

The war on drugs is a propaganda stunt- restricting US sales of some chemicals doesn't work very well simply because it's a legal restriction and the people making drugs are not concerned about breaking the law.
The removal of various chemicals from the OTC market is designed to give the illusion of control. The people are happy because they see that the government has "Done Something" and they are not really in a position to see how pointless the something actually is.

What would be interesting would be a government programme to actually give people better things to do than get high. Somehow I don't see that idea making it into any party manifesto any time soon.

arkoma - 11-4-2016 at 12:16

A HUGE amount of cartel "meth" is this this crap

*edit* It's so prevalent, I bought my sister Marquis Reagent for Christmas (don't ask LOL)

[Edited on 4-11-2016 by arkoma]

JJay - 12-4-2016 at 00:20

Quote: Originally posted by clearly_not_atara  
Not only is "chemistry" not even a close approximation to "drug development", there's a fundamental misunderstanding here about pseudoephedrine:

It's not the only chemical that treats colds.

It's not even the best, nor is it the cheapest.

It's off-patent.

See the problem? By inventing something "new", it becomes patentable, which means it becomes expensive, which means it doesn't compete with pseudoephedrine. The whole enterprise is doomed by design from the start.

Quote:
As an aside, isn't (pseudo)ephedrine meant to be a fairly important ligand for asymmetric synthesis? I think that alone precludes it from the higher scheduling(potential for abuse with no legitimate uses?)


Ephedrine alkoxides (i.e. deprotonated ephedrines) are good asymmetric bases for e.g. enantioselective dehydrohalogenation. I dunno about "ligand", but it is useful. Amphetamine itself can be kinda useful.

[Edited on 11-4-2016 by clearly_not_atara]


What would you suggest using as a decongestant?

Loptr - 12-4-2016 at 04:26

Quote: Originally posted by JJay  
Quote: Originally posted by clearly_not_atara  
Not only is "chemistry" not even a close approximation to "drug development", there's a fundamental misunderstanding here about pseudoephedrine:

It's not the only chemical that treats colds.

It's not even the best, nor is it the cheapest.

It's off-patent.

See the problem? By inventing something "new", it becomes patentable, which means it becomes expensive, which means it doesn't compete with pseudoephedrine. The whole enterprise is doomed by design from the start.

Quote:
As an aside, isn't (pseudo)ephedrine meant to be a fairly important ligand for asymmetric synthesis? I think that alone precludes it from the higher scheduling(potential for abuse with no legitimate uses?)


Ephedrine alkoxides (i.e. deprotonated ephedrines) are good asymmetric bases for e.g. enantioselective dehydrohalogenation. I dunno about "ligand", but it is useful. Amphetamine itself can be kinda useful.

[Edited on 11-4-2016 by clearly_not_atara]


What would you suggest using as a decongestant?


My thoughts exactly. What is a better decongestant? I know the substitute feel like nothing more than a placebo.

The drug issue is more complicated and convoluted than anyone of us could imagine since there are multiple sides for every angle on the issue. It is a self-perpetuating machine that ensnares all that engage in such discussion because there is no solution that can be found in a simple thread on a forum.

Decreasing drug use requires an evidence and metrics based approach because the underlying mechanism varies so widely from person to person. There is no one solution, only changes that can be made to make it better or worse. There isn't the ability to eliminate it, but only ways to mitigate the potential of majority drug use.

[Edited on 12-4-2016 by Loptr]

CuReUS - 12-4-2016 at 04:33

calm down everyone,don't make a mountain out of a molehill
the government and pharmaceutical companies discovered long back that they could not ban sudafed completely.So they came up with an ingenious solution.
Mix a certain filler with the sudafed so that the moment it hits NaOH(when the cooks try to extract it) it immediately turns into a gooey mass which is impossible to work with.
problem solved.:P

EDIT: wait a minute,I just realised, Wasn't the shake 'n' bake method invented to overcome this very problem :o

In that case the only solution is to go for herbal remedies:D

[Edited on 12-4-2016 by CuReUS]

Loptr - 12-4-2016 at 05:16

Quote: Originally posted by CuReUS  
calm down everyone,don't make a mountain out of a molehill
the government and pharmaceutical companies discovered long back that they could not ban sudafed completely.So they came up with an ingenious solution.
Mix a certain filler with the sudafed so that the moment it hits NaOH(when the cooks try to extract it) it immediately turns into a gooey mass which is impossible to work with.
problem solved.:P

EDIT: wait a minute,I just realised, Wasn't the shake 'n' bake method invented to overcome this very problem :o

In that case the only solution is to go for herbal remedies:D

[Edited on 12-4-2016 by CuReUS]


I think the shake n' bake is the result of a cook finding a paper and having a death wish. I am not exactly sure what you mean by it turning into a gooey mass.

After recently seeing a friend from school in a newspaper after apparently getting caught up in a heroin ring bust, I found out a little more about what he did after school. Shake and bake cook. I had casually heard about this in the news, but I finally looked into it just recently. Holy hell. What the f*ck are they thinking?! And how the hell does adding water to the mixture not screw up the in-situ lithium compound (lithium bronze is what I have seen it referred to--who came up with that name, by the way, it's not bronze)?

Does this even work at all, or are they just ingesting cleaned pseudoephedrine?

[Edited on 12-4-2016 by Loptr]

Cou - 12-4-2016 at 13:54

Or start a campaign to boycott Sudafed by telling everyone to toughen up and take their cold like a man.

arkoma - 12-4-2016 at 14:02

Quote: Originally posted by Loptr  
Quote: Originally posted by CuReUS  
calm down everyone,don't make a mountain out of a molehill
the government and pharmaceutical companies discovered long back that they could not ban sudafed completely.So they came up with an ingenious solution.
Mix a certain filler with the sudafed so that the moment it hits NaOH(when the cooks try to extract it) it immediately turns into a gooey mass which is impossible to work with.
problem solved.:P

EDIT: wait a minute,I just realised, Wasn't the shake 'n' bake method invented to overcome this very problem :o

In that case the only solution is to go for herbal remedies:D

[Edited on 12-4-2016 by CuReUS]


I think the shake n' bake is the result of a cook finding a paper and having a death wish. I am not exactly sure what you mean by it turning into a gooey mass.

After recently seeing a friend from school in a newspaper after apparently getting caught up in a heroin ring bust, I found out a little more about what he did after school. Shake and bake cook. I had casually heard about this in the news, but I finally looked into it just recently. Holy hell. What the f*ck are they thinking?! And how the hell does adding water to the mixture not screw up the in-situ lithium compound (lithium bronze is what I have seen it referred to--who came up with that name, by the way, it's not bronze)?

Does this even work at all, or are they just ingesting cleaned pseudoephedrine?

[Edited on 12-4-2016 by Loptr]


Done PROPERLY shake and bake works like a CHARM, and when your done the reduced substrate is already in the organic layer.

A dry non polar org solvent, ammonium nitrate, lithium, and the substrate in a 2 litre bottle. Small amounts of DRY sodium hydroxide are added. In situ prep of anhydrous ammonia>>solvated electrons>>reduction of said substrate.

Chemistry, NOT magic.

And on the subject of ephedrine, the California desert is LITTERED with Ephedra Viridis. It's low in actual l-ephedrine but contains significant amounts of ephedrine isomers such as nor-psuedoephedrine (phenylpropanolamine, which reduces EASILY to d-amphetamine).

aga - 12-4-2016 at 14:12

Quote: Originally posted by arkoma  
nor-psuedoephedrine

What does the 'nor' bit mean ?

I've seen ortho, meta, para, iso etc, but never 'nor'.

Metacelsus - 12-4-2016 at 15:17

It's a prefix that means the compound has one fewer carbon atom: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nor-

CuReUS - 13-4-2016 at 01:14

Quote: Originally posted by Loptr  
I am not exactly sure what you mean by it turning into a gooey mass.

what I mean is that when you add the sudafed HCl into NaOH,the whole mixture turns into a jelly like substance from which it is impossible to extract the free base.
Quote:
Does this even work at all, or are they just ingesting cleaned pseudoephedrine?

like arkoma said,It works quite well(from the number of soda bottles littering the highway sides and forests ;) )
from what I said above,it is difficult to get the freebase from the goo.So what did the cooks do ? They came up with a way to get meth without going through the pseudo extraction step.
result- the SnB method
actually the SnB is not a new method.The birch reduction of pseudo to meth has been around for a long time
the advantage of SnB is that you can do the whole reaction in a coke bottle instead of using different containers and you don't need to make liquid NH3 using dry ice.It forms in-situ due to the pressure inside the bottle

here is a video showing the SnB method ( educational purposes only)
https://youtu.be/FC_xWQzHW4Q?t=254
Quote: Originally posted by aga  

What does the 'nor' bit mean ?
I've seen ortho, meta, para, iso etc, but never 'nor'.

it is an acronym for the german word "N-or radicle" which means that the compound has a N atom without a radicle(most commonly an alkyl group) which it had before.It is the Nitrogen version of the word "desoxy" when you want to say the same thing for O.
this explanation is from shulgin's book - PIHKAL


[Edited on 13-4-2016 by CuReUS]

unionised - 13-4-2016 at 11:29

Quote: Originally posted by aga  
Quote: Originally posted by arkoma  
nor-psuedoephedrine

What does the 'nor' bit mean ?

I've seen ortho, meta, para, iso etc, but never 'nor'.

It's from the German for "nitrogen without radicals" or so I'm told.
It implies a primary amine group (slightly ironically).

aga - 13-4-2016 at 12:32

Thank you for the explanationsof 'nor'.

I kinda get it, but my OC knowledge isn't good enough yet to really undestand.

arkoma - 13-4-2016 at 14:40

Ah--Nor is to Nitrogen as Deoxy is to Oxygen.

*edit* no that ain't right is it?

[Edited on 4-13-2016 by arkoma]

OneEyedPyro - 16-4-2016 at 01:54

The government ought to just step out as far as I'm concerned, regulating what people can and cannot put into their own bodies is simply ludicrous.

Call me an anarchist but if some tweaker wants to unwind with a nice pipe of meth after a long day of stealing copper and picking imaginary bugs from their skin, I say more power to them :D

arkoma - 16-4-2016 at 08:40

Quote: Originally posted by OneEyedPyro  
The government ought to just step out as far as I'm concerned, regulating what people can and cannot put into their own bodies is simply ludicrous.

Call me an anarchist but if some tweaker wants to unwind with a nice pipe of meth after a long day of stealing copper and picking imaginary bugs from their skin, I say more power to them :D



The tweaker ought to go to jail for stealing copper, not for the meth. I tweaked for YEARS (finally out grew it in middle-age, took too fucking long to recover from a binge) but I wasn't a damn thief.

OneEyedPyro - 16-4-2016 at 11:33

Seems like most meth users can't mantain a job due to the binge and crash nature of it all, they often end up ripping people or businesses off to support their habit.

Good for you getting off the shit Arkoma, I've watched too many good people lose it all, wifes, kids, houses, businesses, some even slipped into psychosis and completely lost it never to be the same again. It's definately one hell of a drug.

Despite how bad meth is I still don't believe for a second that the government has any business regulating drugs let alone throwing folks in prison for using or even selling them for that matter.

arkoma - 17-4-2016 at 11:10

And the thing is, in California I am UNEMPLOYABLE due to a Felony Record for H&S 11359(a)--Possession of Concentrated Cannabis. Not even a crime in California anymore. Makes it almost INFINITELY harder for a "dope head" to integrate into society when they TRULY WANT to.

Believe it or not, here in the "Bible-Belt" folks actually believe I "paid my debt to society". So much for the theory of "Liberal Empathy" because in the PRC (Peoples Republic of California) you pay for the rest of your life.

@Cou--be careful of your "Young Man's" passions, nothing is a black/white issue. There are always shades of grey.

And no, not a delineated Federal power (regulating drugs).

MrBlank - 13-3-2017 at 16:57

Quote: Originally posted by arkoma  
Quote: Originally posted by Loptr  
Quote: Originally posted by CuReUS  
calm down everyone,don't make a mountain out of a molehill
the government and pharmaceutical companies discovered long back that they could not ban sudafed completely.So they came up with an ingenious solution.
Mix a certain filler with the sudafed so that the moment it hits NaOH(when the cooks try to extract it) it immediately turns into a gooey mass which is impossible to work with.
problem solved.:P

EDIT: wait a minute,I just realised, Wasn't the shake 'n' bake method invented to overcome this very problem :o

In that case the only solution is to go for herbal remedies:D

[Edited on 12-4-2016 by CuReUS]


I think the shake n' bake is the result of a cook finding a paper and having a death wish. I am not exactly sure what you mean by it turning into a gooey mass.

After recently seeing a friend from school in a newspaper after apparently getting caught up in a heroin ring bust, I found out a little more about what he did after school. Shake and bake cook. I had casually heard about this in the news, but I finally looked into it just recently. Holy hell. What the f*ck are they thinking?! And how the hell does adding water to the mixture not screw up the in-situ lithium compound (lithium bronze is what I have seen it referred to--who came up with that name, by the way, it's not bronze)?

Does this even work at all, or are they just ingesting cleaned pseudoephedrine?

[Edited on 12-4-2016 by Loptr]


Done PROPERLY shake and bake works like a CHARM, and when your done the reduced substrate is already in the organic layer.

A dry non polar org solvent, ammonium nitrate, lithium, and the substrate in a 2 litre bottle. Small amounts of DRY sodium hydroxide are added. In situ prep of anhydrous ammonia>>solvated electrons>>reduction of said substrate.

Chemistry, NOT magic.


Choice of solvent is crucial, I would say. Let us consider naphtha (lowest boilng-point distillate of petroleum), and some of its unusual chemical properties... Naphtha's ability to dissolve some substances (*amines?) only increases modestly with heating of the solvent, whilst increasing pressure increases solubilty markedly (I cannot remember where I originally read this). I do know that this is applies true for n n-dimethyltyryptamine.

The reason why the SnB is vented periodically is to reduce pressure; being done under pressure at all would likely suggest the above solubility claim possibly has some merit.

Additionally, "cooks" use the water to (unknowingly) make the reaction proceed at an acceptable rate{1}, rather than just applying gentle heating; by doing so, I am not sure whether the necessary activation energy is achieved, or whether the ?equilibrium constant? shifts.

I am pretty sure one of the more knowledgeable guys here will correct me where necessary. I hope that is not in too many places.

Source: {1} National Geographic (2011). American Underworld, Season1 Episode1:Homemade Illegal Drugs (31:35 - 36:35).

PS.
Funniest ignorant statement = *33:40 - 34:15* :
Interviewer : "What would you say if I told you to put that lithium on your tongue?"
Cook : "I would tell you to go to hell"
Interviewer : " Yet when you mix them together in that bottle, they make a drug that gets you high. How do you explain that?"
Cook : "There is no explanation for it..."

Hilarious.

CuReUS - 14-3-2017 at 02:35

Quote: Originally posted by arkoma  
Ah--Nor is to Nitrogen as Deoxy is to Oxygen.
*edit* no that ain't right is it?

Even I thought that analogy was wrong but I wasn't sure.That's why I gave shulgin's reference so that people didn't think it was my idea.
Quote: Originally posted by MrBlank  

Additionally, "cooks" use the water to (unknowingly) make the reaction proceed at an acceptable rate{1}, rather than just applying gentle heating; by doing so, I am not sure whether the necessary activation energy is achieved, or whether the ?equilibrium constant? shifts.

I think the water is added to remove the oxide layer on Li to make it more reactive and kickstart the reaction.
Quote:
Funniest ignorant statement = *33:40 - 34:15* :
Interviewer : "What would you say if I told you to put that lithium on your tongue?"
Cook : "I would tell you to go to hell"
Interviewer : " Yet when you mix them together in that bottle, they make a drug that gets you high. How do you explain that?"
Cook : "There is no explanation for it..."

typical case of ignorance.Going by that logic,we should stop eating NaCl since Na is reactive and Cl2 is poisonous:P

MrBlank - 14-3-2017 at 02:54

Also, it does have an explanation... it is simple science! (it's not magic, or something). Sometimes, I swear the term should be meth wizard, not meth cook.

And, moving the subject back to thread title...

"Big Pharma" is also very interested in reformulating currently approved compounds (psuedoephedrine), in order to thwart their use in illicit drug manufacture. Innocentive crowdsourced this problem, inviting "Solutions" to the "challenge" from anybody. It has run 4 times now (at least). As I had to register as a solver in order to fully read the "challenge" conditions, I know at at least once it was "solved."


Pseudoephedrine #3: Outsmarting Methamphetamine Producers
STATUS: Awarded
ACTIVE SOLVERS: 205
POSTED: Aug 20 2014
TYPE: RTP
SOURCE: InnoCentive

https://www.innocentive.com/ar/workspace/challengeDetail/571...


If recently developed applications for nanotechnology in the field of medicine are anything to go by, delivery of the active ingredient by nanopartices to the desired cells could reduce the quantity of compound required to achieve the same therapuetic results.
I have been told anecdotally that the products that are applied locally (intra-nasal) are effective, resulting in reduction in dosage.

[Edited on 14-3-2017 by MrBlank]

macckone - 14-3-2017 at 21:05

Afrin or it's generics are quite good at relieving congestion
but they suffer rebound effect.
The saline solutions work wonders as well but aren't
something you can do in a suit and tie.
Psuedoephedrine is still around because it works and the
PE crap is crap and everyone knows it.

tsathoggua1 - 20-3-2017 at 01:53

All the drugs used as adrenergic decongestants, locally applied will cause rebound congestion, due to the likes of nasal drops, be it ephedrine, PSE or xylometazoline/oxymetazoline, they will ALL do it, unless one uses something like clonidine/tizanidine/medetomidine, xylazline etc.

Otherwise one gets receptor desensitization, downregulation, G-protein decoupling etc. Or coupling to beta-arrestins etc. upon typical g-protein bound boud receptors.

[Edited on 20-3-2017 by tsathoggua1]

The Volatile Chemist - 3-4-2017 at 12:52

So far as I've ever seen and heard, 'Nor-' means normalized. Cite Bornane vs. Norbornane.

clearly_not_atara - 3-4-2017 at 18:49

IMO part of the reason you can't develop a replacement for Sudafed is that pseudoephedrine itself would never pass an FDA review and is basically only available as an OTC drug because of the FDA's extreme conservatism and commitment to "grandfathering" old drugs, which is also why Advil is OTC but newer NSAIDs are not despite being basically the sane thing.

No drug that works like Sudafed, as an adrenaline releaser, will be approved in today's regulatory climate. Ethcathinone would be perfectly suitable and is nearly impossible to convert to a good drug, but it won't fly. Phenylephrine has to jump through safety hoops that pseudoephedrine never did.