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...
The last time I looked up the Swiss program it was only servicing a small number of people. Around 1500 in a country if 9 million. It also wasn’t prescribed like a typical medication but part of a program where they received other treatment as well. There was some exception where some people could get 2 days of it at a time to take home, but it wasn’t a free for all prescription where they could just talk to a doctor and get their monthly desired supply from a pharmacy.
Many countries, including the US, use methadone for maintenance. As I understand it it’s not as enjoyable as some people’s opioids of choice but it’s still an extremely powerful opioid depending on the dose (easily fatal).
So it’s not only the countries you mentioned that provide pharmaceutical opioids as maintenance treatment. The US does too, though the form is different.
I'd say it is about what you expect for a country with voluntary programs. In the Netherlands the original program like the Swiss, resulted in heroïne becoming a medication for heavily addicted people usable under supervision. In the Netherlands there are about 4000 people with medical prescriptions for heroine on a 18M population.
Note that it is free, supervised and voluntary so ymmv in other countries. The conclusions of the original program with methadone in the 80s was that it resulted in hardly any reduction amongst heavy and problematic users and they were likely to go back to using heroine with all the associated problems, the heroine distribution program worked but needed some tweaking, thus the program was fully legalised and put into law resulting in supervised consumption (at the distribution point) with dosage control and medical checkups and far less issues.
A problem LAR programs have had since the start is that although methadone is less attractive as a drug than heroin, it's still attractive, and basically the only way to figure out how much a heroin addict needs is to ask them. Leading to users asking for extra, selling the excess (to users who were not in the LAR program) and buying other drugs with the profits. For some years, more people died from methadone overdose in Norway than heroin.
Sure, you could demand injection on site to reduce this problem. But that just makes the program less appealing. You could also just hand out the users' drug of choice directly (heroin) rather than the less harmful substitute, but at some point that starts counting as physician-assisted suicide, really.
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."
"From 1999 to 2020, nearly 841,000 people died from drug overdoses,[7] with prescription and illicit opioids responsible for 500,000 of those deaths"
Here's a chart showing overdose deaths from all drugs in the US- yes there's definitely a large spike from 'synthetic opioids' at the end there that's probably all illegal fentanyl. But notice the blue line for 'prescription drugs' was very very steady for the entire length of the chart. That's an enormous number of deaths from completely legal, regulated drugs!
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.
> 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
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.
Many opioids, including opiates, used to be OTC. I personally know someone who used to smoke paregoric (camphorated tincture of opium), which was OTC in the US until 1970.
I believe 1970 was also the year when amphetamine (Benzedrine) inhalers stopped being OTC.
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?
In California weed is legal but highly regulated. It's easy to buy weed in the legal market but very difficult to be licensed to sell or grow it.
The result is that the illegal market dwarfs the legal market. The legal suppliers simply can't compete with efficient and untaxed illegal or grey market sellers.
Note that the consumers who choose the illegal market are not in general socially excluded, habitual criminals or broken down addicts. Weed is widespread in almost all parts of society and probably less prevalent along dirt poor, mentally unwell or homeless drug users, who favour fent or meth.
People with jobs and houses choose illegal weed because it's both cheaper and easier to get hold of.
Isn't it illegal in the entire US? The question doesn't seem to be whether you can obtain it legally, but how many laws you'd rather break in the process, and how much trace you'd like to leave behind. I imagine the illegal vendors are less likely to leave a discoverable trace (that could affect your future background checks etc.) than the "legal" vendors, which itself is an incentive to obtain it illegally even when it's cheaper and safer and easier to obtain less-illegally right next door.
Which basically means the US hasn't really tried legalizing it at all.
(Not advocating for any position here, just commenting on the facts.)
California is probably the best example going of how not to "legalize" weed.
However, this also highlights the primary difference between weed and meth, opiates: ease of manufacturing. The only other common drugs that come close are things like mushrooms and fermented beverages, and I'd argue both of those are still riskier.
Not every drug is an opioid. We have prohibition laws designed for opioids blindly applied to any (in the western context) nontraditional drug. The German law on drugs is literally called "the painkiller law", for instance.
The meaning has drifted, appropriately enough. Betäubungsmittel originally meant painkillers, as you can tell from the word. It's just that now every recreational drug is labeled as such.
You seem to be confusing the words "Schmerzmittel" (analgesic, pain killer) and "Betäubungsmittel" (narcotic). Those two classes of substances are not the same.
"Betäubung" has a similar etymology as "narcotic". Both mean to numb the senses or put to sleep (hence e.g. "narcolepsy"), and in German it's therefore also used for sedatives and anesthetic drugs. In modern use, "narcotic" has also semantically shifted to include any illegal drug, as with "Betäubungsmiddel".
Interestingly, in both cases the semantic shift seems to have been caused by the enactment of laws to control drugs. The legal term these days is probably "controlled substance" in English, but "narcotic" now definitely refers to many drugs that are not medically narcotic.
It can also mean anesthetics, which coincidentally would include cocaine as a strong local anesthetic, but not a narcotic in the pharmacological sense.
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.
I think another under-discussed factor in the opioid crisis is that opioids are cheap, but (American) healthcare to treat underlying pain is not. You might not be able to afford six weeks of physical therapy, surgery, etc., but you can probably afford $11.23 a month for a generic prescription.
My view of a lot of the opioid crisis stuff aside from physical pain is psychological trauma - people self medicating as an alternative to doing the work.
That’s why I think the psychoactive legislation that’s introduced recently about psychedelics is so important because those things can rapidly accelerate processing and healing psychological trauma.
My view, is if this was done 20 - 30 years ago there wouldn’t be such a large demand for opiates. I take it further and say that probably some in the drug companies understand this already and were lobbying against the introduction of more curative psychedelic treatments so that they could sell subscriptions to painkillers.
Chronic Back pain is correlated with emotional trauma. The physical body is a mere projection of the energetic and spiritual being. This is wahy meditative spiritual practices such as yoga and taiji are good for chronic pain, as the physical pain is a mere projection of a deeper trauma that needs released.
Ignoring the spiritual part, emotional state does have a well-known feedback loop with physical state. There’s a (largely incorrect) idea in pop psychology that just as happiness leads to smiling, smiling leads to happiness. It’s not nearly that simple, but there are some more straightforward examples: lots of tense emotional states (anger, anxiety) lead to tense muscles (jaw being the classic example). Relaxing your jaw can lead to a (temporary) relaxation of your emotional tenseness. I’ve never heard of a similar result for the lower back, but it’s not hard to imagine. If nothing else, they must be correlated through sedentary lifestyle.
> (largely incorrect) ... just as happiness leads to smiling, smiling leads to happiness.
I don't have a citation to hand and it's really old but there was academic research supporting that at some point. IIRC they used some clever request to get people to move their facial muscles in various ways without tipping them off about what was really going on and then asked them lots of questions that touch on emotional state.
Setting the woo aside, there is a lot of data on disorders like central sensitization syndrome that show our psychological state has a very strong modulating effect on our perception of pain.
By directing your attention towards, or away from, physical phenomena that mechanically affect your lower back: overexertion, underexertion, posture, nutrient intake, crowd...
I mean tons of back pain is medically unexplained. It's not like physiology has a perfect record here that can be used to dismiss alternative theories.
>Those are exactly the people you want to have access to it
Yes but that's different from 'every random person can buy some meth at 7-11 or the government store' though. I'm fine with a controlled program for registered, hardcore addicts- the 2% who do 50% of the drugs or what have you.
>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
I mean, states & countries that have completely state-run liquor stores still have alcoholism and serious alcohol problems though? If 'removing the profit structure' worked magically, more countries would do it. AFAIK rates of alcoholism aren't even different between state-run and private sector models
State run liquor stores in the US don’t prevent companies advertising alcohol on TV. The US is really bad at allowing drugs without then also allowing drug promotion.
A better comparison is probably countries where prescription drugs can’t be advertised to the general public. But, then you’re dealing with a lot of differences in other government policies.
That's a bit of an apples and oranges comparison. The thing about for-profit prescriptions is that they incentivize doctors to prescribe opiates for people who don't need them, people who may not have even been interested in them. A for-profit retailer selling alcohol doesn't have that aspect at play at all; at most the for-profit aspect encourages flashy advertising and displaying alcohol more prominently, but nothing to the level of having a trusted expert in a one-on-one setting personally pushing for you to consume.
Instead the pressure to consume alcohol comes at a grassroots level. Social alcohol consumption is deeply rooted in human culture, and it's generally the people around you who will push you to consume. This pressure is independent of any profit motive, so removing the profit motive does nothing to affect it.
> AFAIK rates of alcoholism aren't even different between state-run and private sector models
Looking at some 2016 WHO statistics, the US seems to have ~3x the rate of alcholism as Iceland, but I recognise these are cherrypicked examples and I'm not interested enough to do a deep dive aggregating countries. Still, it seems plausible that government intervention can reduce alcholism rates. The fact that it's not 0% means nothing; nothing in the world is 0%, outlawing murder doesn't mean murder doesn't happen, but you can strive to reduce it as much as reasonably possible.
Alcoholics (the really bad ones that we're presumably talking about here) don't consume because of social pressure. It's addiction and all the associated psychological and sociological complexity that implies.
I expect any comparison of alcoholism rates will need to account for social (particularly religion) and socioeconomic factors. An awful lot of addicts are engaging in escapism.
Addiction doesn't start until you've first started consuming a substance. The means by which you first start consuming alcohol vs. opioids are completely different, and the former is virtually always the result of social environment.
Sure, recreational social interactions tend to be the introduction since it's legal and a common pastime. But such interactions are almost never the primary driver of alcoholism except perhaps in specific college environments where you might reasonably describe the pastime as competitive drinking. That's far from the norm though.
Coincidentally, aside from official prescriptions recreational social interactions are also the primary method of introduction to drugs of all sorts.
> Social alcohol consumption is deeply rooted in human culture
This is actually dependent on the culture and not all are the same, interesting paper on the topic (in cultures with higher agricultural interdependency alchool was not used as a tool for social cohesion): https://www.researchgate.net/publication/404116345_On_the_Fu...
> I mean, states & countries that have completely state-run liquor stores still have alcoholism and serious alcohol problems though
They have less of it. Reducing access and increasing price reduces consumption, as any economist would expect.
The main problem with government monopolies of this sort is that they usually lack democratic legitimacy (i.e. would be voted away in a single issue vote) are under constant PR attack from people who profit from the regulated product. Leading to concessions such as the Norwegian monopoly being run as a for-profit corporation.
> If 'removing the profit structure' worked magically, more countries would do it.
No they wouldn't, for the obvious reason: those who profit from it have a voice, and are better organized than the ones who suffer from it (many who are addicts and want easy access anyway).
All Scandinavian countries except Denmark have some form of state-run monopoly on the sale of harder alcohol, and of these countries, Denmark is the country where people drink the most, in particular among the youth.
It is disingenuous to claim that something doesn't work if it doesn't eliminate it completely. It is pretty well recognized that tight regulation of alcohol sales and marketing together with taxation helps reduce overall consumption. Alcohol consumption was also not eliminated during the prohibition in the US.
It's also important to recognize that making a drug legal is not the same as regulating it properly, and just making it legal can very well bring more harms than keeping it prohibited if no regulation of its sale and marketing is introduced.
Lets not forget that in the US not only opioids get legalized, but they were given to people as a substitute for aspirins. And then retired without mercy. Did you get addicted? Well, you are on your own now, go get some fentanyl under a bridge.
I live in Spain. Alcohol is not tighty regulated here, and is cheap if we compare with nordic countries. But we, overall, have a culture of knowing how to drink, low proof drinks and in low quantities. The worst drinkers here are tourists from northern countries that binge on high grade alcohol because it is cheap. I had never seen someone chugging a liter of beer like it is water, or do that thing with a can of beer where you force the whole can, or that other thing with the funnel and a tube, like you were in a hurry to get drunk. You just drink a beer whenever you want, at slow pace. Spain, overall, consumes a lot of alcohol, but the consumption is so spread among the population that you rarely see adults drunk.
Our neighbor in the south, Morocco, allows for marihuana consumption and selling, and they have way less problems with it than any european country. But they have alcohol tightly forbidden, and it is a big problem there.
I went to Finland, and there were ships going from Finland to Estonia, carrying people just to buy cheaper alcohol there. They went back to Helsinki with shopping bags full of vodka. Makes you wonder how does it look Tallin in drinking statistics. I bet something similar is going on between Sweden and Denmark or Germany, whatever trip is shorter and cheaper.
The point is that a culture of taking drugs needs time to develop.
> I went to Finland, and there were ships going from Finland to Estonia, carrying people just to buy cheaper alcohol there. They went back to Helsinki with shopping bags full of vodka. Makes you wonder how does it look Tallin in drinking statistics.
They just need to exclude the shops in a 150 m radius from Terminal D in the Tallinn harbor to get accurate statistics, the Finns rarely go beyond that ;)
Yes, the swedes take the ferry to Denmark and the danes take the car over the border to Germany.
There has also been a movement to change the culture of drinking in Denmark, and the consumption has generally been going down, although it still remains high among youth. This also goes to show that there are many complex factors at play and that legal status alone cannot explain consumption patterns.
I do believe that prohibition makes it a lot harder to influence the culture around consumption compared to a legalized and regulated market.
We raised the drinking age from 16 to 18. The end result is more underage drinking but now illegal, more heavy drinking under 18, a rise in hospitalisations and a rise in problematic alcohol usage of the 18-23 group. The rise correlated strongly with the change in law. Let's see if it drops after a decade or so but I doubt it.
> 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.
I personally consider the war on drugs to be a colossal failure and there tends to be widespread agreement that the War on Drugs was somewhat effective at enabling enforcement, but ineffective or counterproductive at eliminating drugs or reducing long-term harm.
What America continues to ignore, intentionally or not, is the root cause of drug addiction which tends to be a more complicated and nuanced
Well, now the war on drug is over and we see that the harms from _not_ doing it are worse. In 2023, overdoses overtook gun and traffic deaths _combined_.
Surrendering to the drugs was a mistake.
Yeah, we should have changed tactics. Zero-tolerance policies were terrible nonsense, long prison terms were not helpful, and we should have clamped on prescription pills way sooner.
> but ineffective or counterproductive at eliminating drugs
It was effective in _controlling_ their level. And alternative approaches are just not working.
It seems like you've already made up your mind what to believe. In particular you've failed to critically analyze the broader context in which overdose deaths went up and I also have to question your suggestion that the war on drugs in the US ever ended.
Sure, marijuana is largely accepted at this point. Most other things you still buy from gangsters on a street corner or via the darknet and will still be arrested for having, frequently losing your job as a side effect.
To overdose deaths, those largely correlate to the Sacklers (ie medical professionals inappropriately pushing product with a veneer of legitimacy) and to fentanyl. The latter is particularly deadly due to the combination of accessibility to amateurs with the inherent difficulty of safely compounding such a potent chemical as part of a clandestine operation.
This is complete rubbish. The peak years of the war on drugs had a variety of hard drugs available on street corners across all major cities.
At best it kept some amount of some drugs less visible in some suburbs and communities, while making it profitable for suppliers to cross those lines.
The main effect of the war on drugs was a level of incarceration outdoing almost any society in human history. The fact that the numbers jailed for victimless and quality of life 'crimes' kept going up is testament to the fact that there was hardly any effective deterrence.
To me this reads as naive because I could get most any drug on many street corners easily any time within the last 30 years once I was old enough to realize what was going on and notice.
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.
> 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.
Well, in my proposal it would depend on case by case for each chemical, but basically follow a dispensary model with regulations and controlled access (ID swipe, nationally tracked, time-windows quotas), proportional to the dangers of over-use of the chemical.
For instance, I could purchase psilocybin/mescaline/ibogaine treatment at a dispensary (obviously imagining a therapeutic commoditized future). I could also purchase mescaline/psilocybin/salvia recreationally. Some recreational access may be "psych tested", or at least "need to pass the monitored orientation session" using special assays to ensure people could handle a "solo flight".
For the chem in question, it really is a more basic case I think of purity/quality/amount/regulation. I could walk into a dispensary and do a 50mg (is that correct?) line instead of a hit of espresso. Would I do this? I'd like to try, at least. The fact that I could, and know it was high quality and safe would be very cool.
I'm probably a bit weird/sci-fi/psychedelic utopian but I love the idea of a menagerie of dispensaries dealing out all kinds of cool, useful and exploratory chemicals safely. There could even be a chain of PiHKaL/TIHKAL outlets. Perhaps affectionately named "Shulgin's Drug Store". lol :)
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
> On the toxicity side, do you have any studies to cite? I wasn’t aware of toxicity, but it’s plausible.
A typical therapeutic dose of amphetamines is around 20mg, topping at around 60mg for serious narcolepsy. Recreational doses can go up to around 1000mg for long-term users with 360mg as the median: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40385390/
That's the area of crazy toxic side effects just from vasoconstriction. Never mind direct effects on the brain.
Okay, I remember seeing a documentary where people were doing lines of methampheatmine. And typically people would do 2 to 3 lines and be up all night. I would consider a line a "small amount".
If I could go to a regulated dispensary and do a line of methamphetamine I think I'd try it. I don't think it would be neurotoxic, but I'd be very interested to know data that supports that, obviously! If you have, please show.
The doses you are describing I think fall outside responsible recreational use and into other categories - that sound more like poisoning / overdose.
A problem of criminalization is that society seems to tend to bucket all illegal drugs into a single category of usage misrepresented by the worst doses. It is possible for people to use these substances responsibly. And with assistance on purity, and regulated access, I believe the chances are high.
The regime I am proposing should even make it easier to deal with the % of people who bucket into overdoese/poison territory.
I'm not sure how much 1 line contains, but to me it seems as if it would be 50mg?
>If I could go to a regulated dispensary and do a line of methamphetamine I think I'd try it.
You can, it's called getting an ADHD diagnosis through a telehealth provider, which gets you an adderal prescription. It's not literally meth, but for all intents and purposes it's equivalent.
> 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.
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.
You slip such a confident assertion in there seemingly without justification. Do you think (for example) that the world would be better off without alcohol? I certainly don't. Everything has downsides; that doesn't on its own justify eliminating it. It's analogous to the adage that the most secure computer is the one encased in a block of cement so as to render it entirely unusable.
I believe the world would be better of without alcohol for consumption, yes.
The only real benefits are not being the one outside the group, and the downsides include liver damage, social damage, massively higher risk for falling, drunk driving,...
More to the point, alcohol would never be permitted if it was invented today. Marijuana might.
You left out the most important benefit IMO. People enjoy the effects it has. Instead you're making out like it serves no purpose.
> More to the point, alcohol would never be permitted if it was invented today. Marijuana might.
Isn't that circular reasoning? We know the world is better off without it because it would run afoul of the current regulatory regime. It would run afoul of the current regulatory regime because we know the world is better off without things like that.
> 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
The original Atlantic article, which this one is trying to refute, also doesn't present any evidence for the theory that 'new meth' has significant different effects on health.
After a fact dump about different types of meth, it's literally a collection of anecdotal evidence from meth users going "for the first 5 years of smoking weekly, I had a great time partying in a relaxed way with my best buds, now that I've lost my job, partner, family and home and smoke daily my mental health is fucked up".
And people working in drug care and enforcement saying "when a few rich hedonists would spend $60 for the next level high, it didn't cause schizophrenia. Now that we have thousands of former crack and opiate addicts living in tents injecting $10 bags three times a day it seems to be contaminated with something that causes detachment from reality."
The literal two most common and evergreen things in drug culture are users claiming that the old stuff was much better and would deliver a clean high without addiction for barely any money, and cops claiming that the old users were better, gentlemen fiends who did not sell their bodies or rob and exploit their own families, never bit or stabbed you when being arrested, and did not soil themselves or set fire to their own clothes while in custody.
I really appreciate your take. I think it is correct and reads as accurate. Clearly a batch problem. Also, I'm glad that the read from someone who's been in the trenches and on the ground about this issue is alignment with mine. Thanks for sharing on this thread
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.
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.
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, and the argument that everyone addicted had some other issue going on is pretty pointless imho. Yes, they had some other issue, and now before fixing that issue they also have to deal with being a drug addict.
> Drugs are not addictive in a sense that they make person to go out and buy more.
Some are. Your life could be better than it's ever been but if you've got a physiological dependence on a drug and don't have enough of it in your system you're going to have a very very bad time until you get more. Some drugs will even kill you if you fail to get more and you need to be carefully weaned off them before you can stop taking it.
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.
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.
I think they were using the racemate. But your "giggles-and-joy" framing of meth is bullshit. Not sleeping for 3 days is psychosis-inducing no matter how you achieve that and methamphetamine is much more neurotoxic than amphetamine no matter which enantiomere.
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.
Check out the book “The Fort Bragg Cartel” if you’re wondering why drugs are illegal even if legalization makes more sense from a harm reduction standpoint. The highest levels of the military are involved in drug trafficking. Use of drugs by clandestine colonial states goes all the way back to the opium wars. US is nothing new. The deep state funds off the books operations with drug money and possibly human trafficking as well.
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.
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.
I believe they were using their teeth (or lack thereof) to reference their visible meth addiction. See GP, "2) meth is neurodegenerative. heavy users end up with a permanent disability."
Of course the prohibition is what leads to the loss of teeth. Methamphetamine impacts salivation much more commonly and to a greater extent than amphetamine does. But meth is the cheap and accessible option due to the law.
Yeah but if teeth are the worst of it, that's not really the government's problem. The government doesn't prohibit alcohol to prevent liver damage and that's worse than tooth damage. If teeth aren't the worst of it, what was the worst of it?
I consider it the governments job to keep the population in a state where they can have a net benefit to society. Obviously this needs to be balanced with personal freedoms.
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.
> One path is certainly examining the sample, which is largely discussed in the article by looking at ratios of isomers.
The trend is for the unwanted L-isomer to be mostly eliminated. That doesn't really let you know the process. Other chemical markers are used for this:
"Reductive amination remains the preferred synthetic manufacturing route for methamphetamine with 98.4% of the MPP samples analyzed profiled as originating from a P2P precursor. Approximately 9% (n=62) of these P2P-based samples
showed evidence of being synthesized to methamphetamine under Leuckart conditions. This process uses methylamine and formic acid or N-methylformamide as supporting chemicals. This percentage is a slight increase compared to CY
2022 seizures (~6%). In addition, the MPP has been monitoring the Mercury Amalgam sub-classification with approximately 2% of seizures (n=14) observed to have been synthesized under these conditions and an additional 1% (n=7) of sample profiles showing markers for both Leuckart and Mercury Amalgam reactions, indicating the mixing of finished products at some point during the postproduction process."
> Another path to "knowing how it was made" is examining the manufacturing facilities.
That's obviously not always possible. But the entire point of the discussion above is that law enforcement has a lot of samples and tests a lot of samples, so they are in a good position to understand what has changed.
Markers they found include formic acid and mercury. Neither of those would be particularly good for you to inhale.
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.
Do I understand correctly that you're using it as an appetite suppressant? How effective has it been for you? Particularly considering that you're already drinking coffee and I would have expected caffeine to have the stronger effect there.
Also out of curiosity why not go with one of the new peptides?
It varies quite wildly according to individual it would seem. Some people take it no issue. I generally avoid pseudoephedrine because it is a noticeable stimulant for me.
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.
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.
"Pyrovalerone is a DEA Schedule V controlled substance. Substances in the DEA Schedule V have a low potential for abuse relative to substances listed in Schedule IV and consist primarily of preparations containing limited quantities of certain narcotics."
What? Prohibition historically showed the exact opposite.
I suspect higher purity & potency of street drugs has much more to do with more sophisticated operators operating outside of the US than strict prohibition. Same with fentanyl.
I believe OP wanted to make the point that one of the most important things for people profiting from the illegal sale of drugs (meth or heroin/opiates) is to minimize the amount that has to be trafficked (1kg of 10% meth vs 100g of pure meth or 1kg of heroin vs 10g of fentanyl).
Prohibition encouraged higher potency but purity was highly questionable. The stills themselves often leeched contaminants from the metal used to make them, as well as the heads and tails of the distillate, which should be discarded but might not be.
The production case for a stronger stimulant is weaker. Heroin is a really complicated molecule. It is only made from a natural precursor. Meth can be made by two major pathways, and P2P can be made by at least four off the top of my head. It was the fentanyl equivalent for cocaine. For anything else, you balance the increased complexity of synthesis with any increase in potency.
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.
> 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”
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.
Indeed, and for a layman like me it even sounds quite plausible that this could be what is making people go "mad as a hatter": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erethism
Add to that that the routes of administration preferred by heaver users (smoking and injection) are also those that maximize the harms of mercury exposure.
Initially, yes. But as illicit supply chains were established, usage crept back up. It didn't go all the way up to pre-prohibition usage, but it got pretty close. Just look at the graph in Figure 1 in this article: https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa157.pdf
If we carpet bomb a city and there's nothing left, does that count as a good job suppressing the guerilla insurgents? It's effective, sure ... although I don't know that drug prohibition has been particularly effective either.
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.
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.
>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.
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.
People only see them when they're being objective. My impression is that most people spend most of their time worrying about social status and engaging in tribalism meaning society on the whole is either blind to them or more likely will make up an answer that suits them.
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?
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
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.
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
They’ll be outside funeral homes, outside schools, offering free graduation crack. Ads on every bus, hot women handing it out in the street.
Many countries, including the US, use methadone for maintenance. As I understand it it’s not as enjoyable as some people’s opioids of choice but it’s still an extremely powerful opioid depending on the dose (easily fatal).
So it’s not only the countries you mentioned that provide pharmaceutical opioids as maintenance treatment. The US does too, though the form is different.
What is this supposed to mean?
That’s a completely nonsense statement to make because you’ve provided no data on problem opioid use in Switzerland.
Is 1500 a lot? Not many? Average? Should all nine million be on the program?
Note that it is free, supervised and voluntary so ymmv in other countries. The conclusions of the original program with methadone in the 80s was that it resulted in hardly any reduction amongst heavy and problematic users and they were likely to go back to using heroine with all the associated problems, the heroine distribution program worked but needed some tweaking, thus the program was fully legalised and put into law resulting in supervised consumption (at the distribution point) with dosage control and medical checkups and far less issues.
Sure, you could demand injection on site to reduce this problem. But that just makes the program less appealing. You could also just hand out the users' drug of choice directly (heroin) rather than the less harmful substitute, but at some point that starts counting as physician-assisted suicide, really.
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."
"From 1999 to 2020, nearly 841,000 people died from drug overdoses,[7] with prescription and illicit opioids responsible for 500,000 of those deaths"
Here's a chart showing overdose deaths from all drugs in the US- yes there's definitely a large spike from 'synthetic opioids' at the end there that's probably all illegal fentanyl. But notice the blue line for 'prescription drugs' was very very steady for the entire length of the chart. That's an enormous number of deaths from completely legal, regulated drugs!
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fa/US_timel...
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.
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
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.
I believe 1970 was also the year when amphetamine (Benzedrine) inhalers stopped being OTC.
The result is that the illegal market dwarfs the legal market. The legal suppliers simply can't compete with efficient and untaxed illegal or grey market sellers.
Note that the consumers who choose the illegal market are not in general socially excluded, habitual criminals or broken down addicts. Weed is widespread in almost all parts of society and probably less prevalent along dirt poor, mentally unwell or homeless drug users, who favour fent or meth.
People with jobs and houses choose illegal weed because it's both cheaper and easier to get hold of.
Which basically means the US hasn't really tried legalizing it at all.
(Not advocating for any position here, just commenting on the facts.)
However, this also highlights the primary difference between weed and meth, opiates: ease of manufacturing. The only other common drugs that come close are things like mushrooms and fermented beverages, and I'd argue both of those are still riskier.
1. https://wetten.overheid.nl/BWBR0001941/2026-01-28
Interestingly, in both cases the semantic shift seems to have been caused by the enactment of laws to control drugs. The legal term these days is probably "controlled substance" in English, but "narcotic" now definitely refers to many drugs that are not medically narcotic.
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.
That’s why I think the psychoactive legislation that’s introduced recently about psychedelics is so important because those things can rapidly accelerate processing and healing psychological trauma.
My view, is if this was done 20 - 30 years ago there wouldn’t be such a large demand for opiates. I take it further and say that probably some in the drug companies understand this already and were lobbying against the introduction of more curative psychedelic treatments so that they could sell subscriptions to painkillers.
I don't have a citation to hand and it's really old but there was academic research supporting that at some point. IIRC they used some clever request to get people to move their facial muscles in various ways without tipping them off about what was really going on and then asked them lots of questions that touch on emotional state.
I have heard psychedelics be described as the most effective placebo of all placebos.
Yes but that's different from 'every random person can buy some meth at 7-11 or the government store' though. I'm fine with a controlled program for registered, hardcore addicts- the 2% who do 50% of the drugs or what have you.
>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
I mean, states & countries that have completely state-run liquor stores still have alcoholism and serious alcohol problems though? If 'removing the profit structure' worked magically, more countries would do it. AFAIK rates of alcoholism aren't even different between state-run and private sector models
A better comparison is probably countries where prescription drugs can’t be advertised to the general public. But, then you’re dealing with a lot of differences in other government policies.
Instead the pressure to consume alcohol comes at a grassroots level. Social alcohol consumption is deeply rooted in human culture, and it's generally the people around you who will push you to consume. This pressure is independent of any profit motive, so removing the profit motive does nothing to affect it.
> AFAIK rates of alcoholism aren't even different between state-run and private sector models
Looking at some 2016 WHO statistics, the US seems to have ~3x the rate of alcholism as Iceland, but I recognise these are cherrypicked examples and I'm not interested enough to do a deep dive aggregating countries. Still, it seems plausible that government intervention can reduce alcholism rates. The fact that it's not 0% means nothing; nothing in the world is 0%, outlawing murder doesn't mean murder doesn't happen, but you can strive to reduce it as much as reasonably possible.
I expect any comparison of alcoholism rates will need to account for social (particularly religion) and socioeconomic factors. An awful lot of addicts are engaging in escapism.
Coincidentally, aside from official prescriptions recreational social interactions are also the primary method of introduction to drugs of all sorts.
Lately the trend seems to be slightly decreasing, see : https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-alcohol-1890 (of course heavy dependent on the country and the timescale selected)
> Social alcohol consumption is deeply rooted in human culture
This is actually dependent on the culture and not all are the same, interesting paper on the topic (in cultures with higher agricultural interdependency alchool was not used as a tool for social cohesion): https://www.researchgate.net/publication/404116345_On_the_Fu...
They have less of it. Reducing access and increasing price reduces consumption, as any economist would expect.
The main problem with government monopolies of this sort is that they usually lack democratic legitimacy (i.e. would be voted away in a single issue vote) are under constant PR attack from people who profit from the regulated product. Leading to concessions such as the Norwegian monopoly being run as a for-profit corporation.
> If 'removing the profit structure' worked magically, more countries would do it.
No they wouldn't, for the obvious reason: those who profit from it have a voice, and are better organized than the ones who suffer from it (many who are addicts and want easy access anyway).
It is disingenuous to claim that something doesn't work if it doesn't eliminate it completely. It is pretty well recognized that tight regulation of alcohol sales and marketing together with taxation helps reduce overall consumption. Alcohol consumption was also not eliminated during the prohibition in the US.
It's also important to recognize that making a drug legal is not the same as regulating it properly, and just making it legal can very well bring more harms than keeping it prohibited if no regulation of its sale and marketing is introduced.
I live in Spain. Alcohol is not tighty regulated here, and is cheap if we compare with nordic countries. But we, overall, have a culture of knowing how to drink, low proof drinks and in low quantities. The worst drinkers here are tourists from northern countries that binge on high grade alcohol because it is cheap. I had never seen someone chugging a liter of beer like it is water, or do that thing with a can of beer where you force the whole can, or that other thing with the funnel and a tube, like you were in a hurry to get drunk. You just drink a beer whenever you want, at slow pace. Spain, overall, consumes a lot of alcohol, but the consumption is so spread among the population that you rarely see adults drunk.
Our neighbor in the south, Morocco, allows for marihuana consumption and selling, and they have way less problems with it than any european country. But they have alcohol tightly forbidden, and it is a big problem there.
I went to Finland, and there were ships going from Finland to Estonia, carrying people just to buy cheaper alcohol there. They went back to Helsinki with shopping bags full of vodka. Makes you wonder how does it look Tallin in drinking statistics. I bet something similar is going on between Sweden and Denmark or Germany, whatever trip is shorter and cheaper.
The point is that a culture of taking drugs needs time to develop.
They just need to exclude the shops in a 150 m radius from Terminal D in the Tallinn harbor to get accurate statistics, the Finns rarely go beyond that ;)
There has also been a movement to change the culture of drinking in Denmark, and the consumption has generally been going down, although it still remains high among youth. This also goes to show that there are many complex factors at play and that legal status alone cannot explain consumption patterns.
I do believe that prohibition makes it a lot harder to influence the culture around consumption compared to a legalized and regulated market.
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.
What America continues to ignore, intentionally or not, is the root cause of drug addiction which tends to be a more complicated and nuanced
Surrendering to the drugs was a mistake.
Yeah, we should have changed tactics. Zero-tolerance policies were terrible nonsense, long prison terms were not helpful, and we should have clamped on prescription pills way sooner.
> but ineffective or counterproductive at eliminating drugs
It was effective in _controlling_ their level. And alternative approaches are just not working.
Sure, marijuana is largely accepted at this point. Most other things you still buy from gangsters on a street corner or via the darknet and will still be arrested for having, frequently losing your job as a side effect.
To overdose deaths, those largely correlate to the Sacklers (ie medical professionals inappropriately pushing product with a veneer of legitimacy) and to fentanyl. The latter is particularly deadly due to the combination of accessibility to amateurs with the inherent difficulty of safely compounding such a potent chemical as part of a clandestine operation.
The nancy ragean area levels , i would say yes. Rates are down. https://drugabusestatistics.org/drug-related-crime-statistic...
However, it certainly hasn't gone to 0 and is still quite high.
At best it kept some amount of some drugs less visible in some suburbs and communities, while making it profitable for suppliers to cross those lines.
The main effect of the war on drugs was a level of incarceration outdoing almost any society in human history. The fact that the numbers jailed for victimless and quality of life 'crimes' kept going up is testament to the fact that there was hardly any effective deterrence.
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.
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.
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.
For instance, I could purchase psilocybin/mescaline/ibogaine treatment at a dispensary (obviously imagining a therapeutic commoditized future). I could also purchase mescaline/psilocybin/salvia recreationally. Some recreational access may be "psych tested", or at least "need to pass the monitored orientation session" using special assays to ensure people could handle a "solo flight".
For the chem in question, it really is a more basic case I think of purity/quality/amount/regulation. I could walk into a dispensary and do a 50mg (is that correct?) line instead of a hit of espresso. Would I do this? I'd like to try, at least. The fact that I could, and know it was high quality and safe would be very cool.
I'm probably a bit weird/sci-fi/psychedelic utopian but I love the idea of a menagerie of dispensaries dealing out all kinds of cool, useful and exploratory chemicals safely. There could even be a chain of PiHKaL/TIHKAL outlets. Perhaps affectionately named "Shulgin's Drug Store". lol :)
> 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
A typical therapeutic dose of amphetamines is around 20mg, topping at around 60mg for serious narcolepsy. Recreational doses can go up to around 1000mg for long-term users with 360mg as the median: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40385390/
That's the area of crazy toxic side effects just from vasoconstriction. Never mind direct effects on the brain.
If I could go to a regulated dispensary and do a line of methamphetamine I think I'd try it. I don't think it would be neurotoxic, but I'd be very interested to know data that supports that, obviously! If you have, please show.
The doses you are describing I think fall outside responsible recreational use and into other categories - that sound more like poisoning / overdose.
A problem of criminalization is that society seems to tend to bucket all illegal drugs into a single category of usage misrepresented by the worst doses. It is possible for people to use these substances responsibly. And with assistance on purity, and regulated access, I believe the chances are high.
The regime I am proposing should even make it easier to deal with the % of people who bucket into overdoese/poison territory.
I'm not sure how much 1 line contains, but to me it seems as if it would be 50mg?
You can, it's called getting an ADHD diagnosis through a telehealth provider, which gets you an adderal prescription. It's not literally meth, but for all intents and purposes it's equivalent.
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.
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.
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.
You slip such a confident assertion in there seemingly without justification. Do you think (for example) that the world would be better off without alcohol? I certainly don't. Everything has downsides; that doesn't on its own justify eliminating it. It's analogous to the adage that the most secure computer is the one encased in a block of cement so as to render it entirely unusable.
The only real benefits are not being the one outside the group, and the downsides include liver damage, social damage, massively higher risk for falling, drunk driving,...
More to the point, alcohol would never be permitted if it was invented today. Marijuana might.
> More to the point, alcohol would never be permitted if it was invented today. Marijuana might.
Isn't that circular reasoning? We know the world is better off without it because it would run afoul of the current regulatory regime. It would run afoul of the current regulatory regime because we know the world is better off without things like that.
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?
After a fact dump about different types of meth, it's literally a collection of anecdotal evidence from meth users going "for the first 5 years of smoking weekly, I had a great time partying in a relaxed way with my best buds, now that I've lost my job, partner, family and home and smoke daily my mental health is fucked up".
And people working in drug care and enforcement saying "when a few rich hedonists would spend $60 for the next level high, it didn't cause schizophrenia. Now that we have thousands of former crack and opiate addicts living in tents injecting $10 bags three times a day it seems to be contaminated with something that causes detachment from reality."
The literal two most common and evergreen things in drug culture are users claiming that the old stuff was much better and would deliver a clean high without addiction for barely any money, and cops claiming that the old users were better, gentlemen fiends who did not sell their bodies or rob and exploit their own families, never bit or stabbed you when being arrested, and did not soil themselves or set fire to their own clothes while in custody.
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.
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 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.
I have, and the argument that everyone addicted had some other issue going on is pretty pointless imho. Yes, they had some other issue, and now before fixing that issue they also have to deal with being a drug addict.
Some are. Your life could be better than it's ever been but if you've got a physiological dependence on a drug and don't have enough of it in your system you're going to have a very very bad time until you get more. Some drugs will even kill you if you fail to get more and you need to be carefully weaned off them before you can stop taking it.
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.
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.
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.
The craziness of so many legal things being pretty bad for health is also something worth addressing (alcohol, cigarettes).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_involvement_in_Contra_coca...
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.
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.
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)
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.
What is this going to fix exactly?
Putting half the population in jail?
Missing teeth may not be the worst, but in this case perhaps the most immediately recognizable.
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)
3 lines later..
>.. The Drug Enforcement Agency tests the meth they seize to see how it was made.
quick answer!
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.
The trend is for the unwanted L-isomer to be mostly eliminated. That doesn't really let you know the process. Other chemical markers are used for this:
"Reductive amination remains the preferred synthetic manufacturing route for methamphetamine with 98.4% of the MPP samples analyzed profiled as originating from a P2P precursor. Approximately 9% (n=62) of these P2P-based samples showed evidence of being synthesized to methamphetamine under Leuckart conditions. This process uses methylamine and formic acid or N-methylformamide as supporting chemicals. This percentage is a slight increase compared to CY 2022 seizures (~6%). In addition, the MPP has been monitoring the Mercury Amalgam sub-classification with approximately 2% of seizures (n=14) observed to have been synthesized under these conditions and an additional 1% (n=7) of sample profiles showing markers for both Leuckart and Mercury Amalgam reactions, indicating the mixing of finished products at some point during the postproduction process."
(from https://www.dea.gov/sites/default/files/2025-09/CY%202023%20...)
> Another path to "knowing how it was made" is examining the manufacturing facilities.
That's obviously not always possible. But the entire point of the discussion above is that law enforcement has a lot of samples and tests a lot of samples, so they are in a good position to understand what has changed.
Markers they found include formic acid and mercury. Neither of those would be particularly good for you to inhale.
Also out of curiosity why not go with one of the new peptides?
I'm scared of intestinal motility sides from GLPs.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substituted_cathinone
https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/Pyrovalerone
"Pyrovalerone is a DEA Schedule V controlled substance. Substances in the DEA Schedule V have a low potential for abuse relative to substances listed in Schedule IV and consist primarily of preparations containing limited quantities of certain narcotics."
I suspect higher purity & potency of street drugs has much more to do with more sophisticated operators operating outside of the US than strict prohibition. Same with fentanyl.
I believe this explanation is too simplistic...
"the harder the enforcement, the harder the drugs."
Pseudoephedrine restrictions drove the search for new chemistry and the new chemistry brought in the large scale labs.
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”
> 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.
Heavy disclaimer: I am neither a chemist nor a doctor, so this is speculation on my part.
Add to that that the routes of administration preferred by heaver users (smoking and injection) are also those that maximize the harms of mercury exposure.
https://www.dea.gov/sites/default/files/2025-09/CY%202023%20...
Really? Seems to me that, in general, we suck at it.
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 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.
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.
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.
[0] https://improbable.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Pseudoephe...
[1] https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/pseudephedrine-mad...
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.
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.
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?
Now I can't say that I led a P2P network anymore.