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charley1957
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Quote: Originally posted by Fyndium  | | Funny thing though, I tried to ask my gov't chem office about restrictions on storing and handling chemicals in accommodations. There are clear limits
on fuels and flammable liquids, pressurized gas, explosives&ammo, fireworks and radioactive materials, but there are no factual limits on
poisonous, toxic, reactive or other categories. They gave rather vague answer regarding to common safety matters, but when I asked is it actually
illegal to keep 25kg barrel of sodium cyanide lying around my living room, they only stated that it must be kept locked away from other people.
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Fyndium, yeah it’s all well and good till something happens then they come and take your stuff under all kinds of reasons they couldn’t give you
when you asked. And then you have no recourse on getting it back.
You can’t claim you drank all day if you didn’t start early in the morning.
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charley1957
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Thanks teodor for that first-hand account of Mr. Deebs' lab theft. I know this is an old case, but the more I find out about it the madder I get!
You can’t claim you drank all day if you didn’t start early in the morning.
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teodor
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charley1957, you are welcome, if somebody needs my help to collect more cases like that I can invest a bit of my time. The first step to protect the
community would be to collect all the cases, make them public. You see, that case with Mr. Deeb really had a big resonance in society.
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karlos³
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| Quote: Originally posted by Antigua | [
Exactly! I always get so pissed when I tell people that I'm an amateur chemist and interested in organic compounds. |
A little tip that will help you in the future: don't tell anyone about this, as it will come back to bite you and has no benefits.
Just tell them whatever but not that you're an amateur chemist, this will do you no good.
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Antigua
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| Quote: Originally posted by karlos³ | | Quote: Originally posted by Antigua | [
Exactly! I always get so pissed when I tell people that I'm an amateur chemist and interested in organic compounds. |
A little tip that will help you in the future: don't tell anyone about this, as it will come back to bite you and has no benefits.
Just tell them whatever but not that you're an amateur chemist, this will do you no good. |
You're right, the urge of sharing one's interests is disastrous in that case. Now I started worrying about all the people I've already told that! That
will probably stick for a couple of days with me...
Appreciate it, karl 
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Texium
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I vehemently disagree. If you slip up, or by some unrelated coincidence the authorities learn about your lab, and you have nobody to come to your
defense and say that your interest is legitimate, you’re going to find a lot less sympathy from both the authorities and the public. Secrecy invites
suspicion. If you’re open about your hobby, sure there will be some closed-minded people who will never trust you, but I guarantee that you’ll
come across twice as many people who think it’s damn cool, as long as it’s clear you know what you’re doing. Even if they make the occasional
meth or bomb joke, most people just think they’re being clever and funny with those.
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Fyndium
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Being open and having trail of documents of your hobby makes things quite a lot easier. Usually the case is that a hobbyist is found a pile of
liberally stored chemicals in all kinds of unmarked mason jars and glassware and they can't really describe what they are using them for. Many people
do hoard rare and interesting chemicals just for the sake of it. I've done it many times. There's that once in a lifetime chance to buy something
extra hard to obtain for a bargain price, like someone obtained a ton of mercury for few bucks.
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charley1957
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Texium I agree that openness is better. I have never regretted inviting the local sheriff to my lab. Fundium, I'm guilty also. I once found cold
packs on sale for like 50 cents, and I bought all they had. Now I have all these gallon jars full of Ammonium nitrate. Same with Sulfuric acid. I
lately bought half a drum of 98% for $150 or so. Now I just need some glass carboys......
You can’t claim you drank all day if you didn’t start early in the morning.
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karlos³
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Yeah well, openness is good under a certain point of view.
If you're doing stuff like tryptamine preparation from tryptophan, or worse, the reduction of nitroalkenes to amines.... then, the only thing that
openness about it, and a cleanly conducted notebook will result in, is to be a superior piece of evidence.
So much for everyone among us who conducts legally doubtful research.
And I know we aren't that few.
So please take advice from those who have a clean conscience about what is in their labs with a grain of salt.
You still need to keep a lab notebook with accurate notes, as everyone is required to do.
But maybe only for the case if you let the local sheriff or whatever into your lab, for everything else I would recommend to keep it hidden, the real
deal at least.
In those noncritical situations where someone without proper education in chemistry is looking at it, it might help you out easily of that situation.
However, in case someone with a proper education, even specialised on forensic chemistry, it can break your neck and counts as evidence....
So find a clean way in between, I suggest electronically saved parts for everything cricital, and the notebook to show for everything inbetween.
Also for that fraction, keep your mouth shut, really shut, to anyone else.
There is no win or benefit into telling anyone about your hobby if your hobby really involves whatever they think you are doing.
If you want to brag, hey then do so, at least you know in that case what it was that made them take away all your beloved things a few months later.
But I can assure you, without having been that stupid to brag or tell anyone, that it will hurt a whole lot for a long time...
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Fyndium
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If you are conceptualizing something that might be off the book, leave it off the book. You can read local regulations what you could do.
Forensic chemists are interested in what's illegal and can be used as an evidence. It's their job to look for evidence on wrongdoing, they don't care
stuff that's legal and they're the ones who testify between illegal and legal stuff when there is uncertainty. A logbook of chemical reactions that
contain drug or energetic precursors is very fine with them, because there is black and white on a ledger that you did NOT use them in illegal
activities. It is vice versa, a non-chemist will see hazardous chemicals everywhere and everything that has GHS sticker on it, will be seized.
Professional forensic chemist can separate the interesting stuff within seconds. Of course, an initiated chemist can fool forensics by making false
setups for example mislabeling stuff to appear exactly as a reaction that is legal and harmless, but that's why there are analytics.
And for the matter, doing silly or stupid reactions that don't actually work isn't illegal. This is, if you log something that's nonsense, you might
state that you were in good faith that it was a viable reaction but didn't work. The chemist will probably just nob their head or laugh at you, not to
think that you actually did something very else. For the criminal justice, a evidence must be provided, and it will be hard time for the prosecutor to
prove that you did something bad, if all they've got to show is some very amateurish notes. I know a case where a guy actually got off trouble because
the notes he made were so off the track that an actual forensic chemist testified that it was extremely unlikely that the person could ever have
succeeded making anything illegal, because he was just so bad at chemistry. The case was dropped. I mean, the case went as far as the guy actually
admitting on attempted manufacture and still got dropped.
This is, of course, if you're carrying out illegal operations. I suggest not, because it puts a shade over all the legal chemist amateurs there. If
you do hobby chemistry, keep a log of all you do, so if someone comes snooping thinking something's off, you can show them everything is perfectly
legal to the detail. If you live in a western justice system, I will guarantee that this protects from any judicial issues. I have personally received
a notation for exceptionally well detailed descriptions of my activities in another hobby from the licensing office and they kept it as an exemplary
way to document it.
I don't personally like to talk about my hobby to anyone who doesn't actually know chemistry, because I've got to explain everything and the average
attention span of people is several orders of magnitude shorter than the time needed even for the basics, so it's just easier to think ahead how I
conceal it for my personal space only. Even if you did explain, they'll still think that you *could* do meth and you could be a risk and something
*could* happen, so don't bother. General consensus nowadays is that if something could happen, it will happen, so everything must be banned and
restricted and taken care just in case before.
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karlos³
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| Quote: Originally posted by Fyndium | | This is, if you log something that's nonsense, you might state that you were in good faith that it was a viable reaction but didn't work. The chemist
will probably just nob their head or laugh at you, not to think that you actually did something very else. For the criminal justice, a evidence must
be provided, and it will be hard time for the prosecutor to prove that you did something bad, if all they've got to show is some very amateurish
notes. |
In general, but that is actually not the case in the US as far as I know.
There is some supposedly meth yielding recipe going around, something with gun blueing(whatever that is), ammonia and charcoal which obviously doesn't
result in any meth.
I've seen mentions of it being done in a closed container and resulting in some crystalline substances, supposed to be the desired product....
But despite that being obviously not what is desired, it can still bring you behind bars in the US, as in that case the intention is what counts 
At least I've heard that it brought people behind bars, just like selling flour as drugs would have.
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Fyndium
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Oh yes, indeed, the intention matters more than the action. Selling or buying bunk gear believing it's the real deal usually counts as an act because
of this. Intention is easy to show when you've got a recipe lying around that states "ammonia + gun blue = methhh". The judicial clause that comes in
question in these matters is this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossibility_defense
In my jurisdiction, getting this to a court will bring a forensic chemist to testify that while some of the components can be used as
pre-pre-precursors of something(for reaching: dihydrogen monoxide is a commonly used precursor chemical for many drug synthesis, comparable to
acetone, toluene, ether, etc), from those materials it is not a viable synthesis for anything so the case would be dropped.
But by reading this one realizes that you just need to turn this upside down: my intention was NOT to make anything illegal, and that's exactly why
you've got that logbook of yours. So having ammonia and Gun Blueing Stuff around doesn't count as attempted manufacture.
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charley1957
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Well I think openness and an accurate lab notebook will go a very long way toward absolving one of charges of manufacturing illegal drugs. As with
anything else, don’t be trying to do something illegal under the table and you cannot possibly be CAUGHT doing anything wrong. If someone turns me
in claiming that I’m doing something illegal, and the local sheriff has already seen my lab because I invited him in at some point prior, and my lab
notebook accurately reflects what I’ve been doing, and my chemical stock isn’t peppered with precursors, then I don’t have anything to worry
about. That’s not to say that someone with a grudge and high connections couldn’t cause you some legal grief. I’m sure it’s happened, but
probably way less times than the kind of events that befell Mr. Deebs.
You can’t claim you drank all day if you didn’t start early in the morning.
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