• N&PD Moderators: Skorpio | thegreenhand

  • Neuroscience & Pharmacology Discussion Welcome Guest
    Posting Rules Bluelight Rules
    Recent Journal Articles Chemistry Mega-Thread
    FREE Chemistry Databases! Self-Education Guide

PMA and PMMA

M

Mike_Power

Bluelighter
Joined
Mar 31, 2011
Messages
49
Hi,

I'm a journalist known to some staff here and I am researching PMA/PMMA for a story. I wonder if anyone here would be able to comment around the following question, either via PM or via email?

There seems, anecdotally, to be a higher-than-usual number of mdma-related deaths recently in the UK. In the north-west of England over Xmas, there were five. Greater Manchester police have suggested PMA/PMMA may be to blame.

Obviously without discussing any synthesis here, could anyone comment on the likelihood of PMA/PMMA ending up in a batch of MDMA accidentally? Is PMA/PMMA always, 100% a deliberate separate synth? I dislike the word 'contaminant' when used in press reports around this; I think it is a deliberate and unscrupulous addition.

mods feel free to edit/delete if inappropriate, and apologies if that is the case for any reason. thanks. mike
 
i'm pretty sure its not accidental as it has a different starter material
 
Is PMA/PMMA always, 100% a deliberate separate synth
Click to expand...

Almost unquestionably, yes. Safrole is never contaminated with anethole.

The reason is simple, safrole is illegal and expensive & restricted as a "carcinogen", anethole is not - it's very cheap in comparison.
 
sekio said:
Almost unquestionably, yes. Safrole is never contaminated with anethole.

The reason is simple, safrole is illegal and expensive & restricted as a "carcinogen", anethole is not - it's very cheap in comparison.
Click to expand...

thanks sekio. i think what baffles me is not so much the synthesis of the stuff, but more the mixing and selling of it. It'd blow a huge hole in the pill market, just as the piperazine rash of 2008 did. Who wants to kill their own golden goose? And currently, there is an abundance of MDMA in the UK, with prices for crystal MDMA down and a glut of high-dosed pills.

When you say safrole is never contaminated with anethole, i guess you mean mean in nature?

Is it feasible that precursor dealers might cut product - ie mixing anethole with safrole to get a bigger price? I recall from an old post here that the boiling points are similar?

More widely, I would hypothesise that the Ecstasy trade is non-integrated for operators' safety - meaning that precursor dealers do not synth, and chemists do not press pills. Can anyone cast any light on that?

So at which stage would lethal contaminants be introduced, as has been seen recently in the UK with mixed PMA/MDMA pills? I'd guess at the tableting stage. Which means there's going to be some very pissed-off people higher up a chain filled with ruthless and scary operators, very, very soon.

Idle speculation or something near the truth, do we think?
 
Mike_Power said:
When you say safrole is never contaminated with anethole, i guess you mean mean in nature?
Click to expand...

Anise oil contains both anethole and safrole, and also terpene compounds that would be easy to remove by distillation... I think it might be possible someone could try to produce a MDMA/PMMA mixture using anise oil as a precursor.
 
^ Unfortunately I couldn't find actual percentages, but there's definitely a lot more anethole than safrole in the oil.

EDIT: here's something related to this subject: http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/shulgin/adsarchive/safrole.htm

Dr. Alexander Shulgin said:
There are some reports of safrole being sizable components of Star Anise Oil (Illicium verum, I. parviflorum) but the major compound in these Oils is Anethol, not Safrole. And if Anise Oil were to be used in error as a presumed source of Safrole, this material would give rise to PMA, which has been shown to be very toxic. PMA has been seen as an "Ecstasy" substitute, and I wonder if the uninformed use of Anise Oil as a presumed Safrole source, could have been the origin of PMA in the Ecstasy rave scene.
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
There are essentially no oils legally available anymore that contain predominantely safrole, other oils that contain anethole may contain up to 2% safrole, maybe... Given that aniseed oil is 70-90% anethole, & anethole is qualitatively different than safrole in terms of taste/smell, I seriously doubt it is a contaminant at the "manufacturing" level.

Anecdotally, most safrole is recovered from Ocotea spp. (Brazilian sasafrass) or true sasafrass, root, either purpose-grown for illicit production, or illegaly harvested. The oil from sasafrass is high % of safrole, and contains only trivial amounts of anethole, and hence is the "easiest" and most common source.

It is most likely that pMeOA/pMeOMA is purpose-made and added either into the raw MDMA at supply-level as a psychoactive cut/bulking agent (c.f. levamisole in cocaine) or added into the pills. Either way speculation is not really productive... the mere presence of other amphetamine cuts in MDxx pills just means that greed continues to be a driving force in the market.

Who wants to kill their own golden goose?
Click to expand...

If you make 50k bunk-ass pills, you're not going to stand on the corner selling them one at a time, you'd unload them all at once and fuck off with your 200 grand or whatever.
 
sekio said:
If you make 50k bunk-ass pills, you're not going to stand on the corner selling them one at a time, you'd unload them all at once and fuck off with your 200 grand or whatever.
Click to expand...

But the advantages of having para methoxylated PEAs in your pills as opposed to caffeine or nothing active at all would be limited I imagine... I guess I don't really have any insight into what kind of quality checks you would have to expect.
In any case I fail to see the direct benefit of putting these exact compounds in them as your choice, the rationale would be that there are people who mistake any serotonin releaser for another? Ripping people off is hard to justify in the first place but potentially endangering the lives of countless people is of another order right?

Trying to fool Marquis, Mecke or Mandalin reagent tests would be a strategy but these compounds don't help with that.

(I understand that anyone who wishes to correct me would only be playing the devil's advocate ;) )
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top