The 'because it's made from lithium batteries and fertilizer and drano it has to be bad for you' argument is in it's reasoning, specious in the extreme, and illogical.
Aside from the fact that the route which involves lithium and fertilizer (whilst if it were kept under cryogenic cooling as with the ammonia itself, it COULD be used as a solvent, the low boiling point of butane means that it is not a practical solvent. Pentane would be the lowest boiling light naphtha alkane type solvent that would be practical, or else hexanes or heptanes.) is just one of a fair number of routes, in a process called the Birch-Benckeser reduction, during which lithium metal is added to a solution of liquid anhydrous ammonia [which can be adapted too, I've found out, to employ instead of cryogenic, somewhat hazardous liquid anhydrous ammonia; a stream of NH3 gas, passed through quicklime drying tubes and then introduced into a flask, with an argon inert atmosphere, and lithium metal in a suspension of finely divided, chopped up lithium, for which the battery electrode foils are actually better than reagent grade Li from a chemical supplier because of their large surface area due to being a fine foil. This, chopped up as fine as possible under a protective tub full of naphtha, and just before starting the ammonia gas flow through the bubbler, transfer the Li under inert gas (NOT nitrogen, lithium, alone of the alkali metals forms a nitride, the superbase Li3N. Not to be confused with, given the similar formula, LiN3, the explosive, highly toxic substance lithium azide; which is not dissimilar to cyanide in it's toxic effects, crippling the electron transport chain, causing cells to be starved of ATP, the fundamental unit of 'currency' in terms of cellular energy metabolism.) into the ether, or else start with it in ether and then turn on the NH3, for the generation of which, ammonium sulfate, a very common fertilizer, plus a stronger base than the ammonium cation such as sodium hydroxide, added in a gas generator containing a mixture of solid hydroxide and solid ammonium sulfate, powdered and mixed together, slowly, a solution of saturated NaOH is added, a little at a time, to the gas generator's inlet feed, where it reacts, displacing ammonia gas, and forming sodium sulfate, which can be repurposed once cleaned up later, to bee used as a desiccant, as anhydrous sodium sulfate.
Ammonium sulfate isn't noxious stuff, fairly benign in fact, and sodium sulfate even more so.
And the ammonia, either when done in ether or the classic Birch-Benkeser, in liquid anhydrous NH3 as the solvent, does not make it into the end product. It is simply used as a solvent, because alkali metals, such as lithium, sodium, potassium etc. dissolve in anhydrous ammonia to form initially a deep, very pretty blue colour, due to the complexation of the alkali metal cation by ammonia, to form what is referred to as solvated electrons, which are the reducing species in this case. This solvated electron soup then takes on, when even more concentrated, a golden, shiny metallic appearance, referred to as 'lithium bronze' although having precisely bollocks all to do with the chemical composition of the copper alloys known as bronzes.
Pseudoephedrine or ephedrine is then added along with a proton donor, typically an alcohol such as isopropanol, and the reduction proceeds to completion within at most, a few minutes. All the time for this reduction is spent in preparing the reagent, rather than it's going to work reducing the precursor. Once the reducing system has been prepared, the actual time taken to reduce precursor to meth is very brief and indicated when complete via the loss of the bronze or blue coloration of the solvated electron 'soup' which ends up as a clear liquid, which is extracted and purified by recrystallization.
No chemist worth their salt (pun intended) would allow the product to contain lithium salts after workup, so the battery electrodes are just another means to an end.
And, think of it this way-would you have said the same about DMT extraction from some plant leaves? I bet not. That would involve using dichloromethane or chloroform (DCM being often used in paint strippers, although banned in the UK for this purpose) [OMG my DMT is made with paint stripper!!!!...? I don't think you'd have made that same complaint in that case?]) and OMG it uses CAUSTIC SODA, naphtha (petrol more or less but of a much finer and more specific grade and composition) and BATTERY ACID! (sulfuric acid, although it wouldn't actually BE from a lead-acid accumulator battery because of the lead content and just generally not being pure, but corrosive bog unblocker might be used, or acidic pathway cleaner based on hydrochloric acid) during the acid-base extraction. The chloroform or dichlor being used during an initial defatting stage, to remove plant lipids that otherwise would make the product oil out severely. Generally when extracting leaves, a defatting step is needed before the acid-base extraction. Although when using Mimosa hostillis (Jurema) rootbark, this source of DMT is low enough in lipid content to allow it being extracted 'straight to base', I.e simply basifying with and soaking in a caustic soda solution, before adding hot xylene, and separating off the xylene in a separatory funnel, drying it over anhydrous magnesium sulfate (epsom salts roasted in the oven to drive off the water of crystallization), before decanting the xylene from the salts, filtering at the Buchner, washing the desiccant with a little bit more xylene to get the last bits of DMT absorbed onto it.
Or, think of it this way. Each and every single medication from big pharma had to come from somewhere. That somewhere is a vast array of assorted solvents, acids, bases, catalysts, oxidizers and reducing agents along with all manner of chemicals, inorganic and organic, which are manipulated in such a manner as to undergo the correct sequences of reactions needed to furnish the drug, cleaning up the product, then packaging it in pills, tablets, XR matrices, vials for injection.
Plenty of the chemicals used are nasty customers, that you would definitely NOT want in your pills, potions, patches and lotions. Strong acids, alkyl halides, phosporus and sulfur halides, such as phosphorus oxychloride, which IIRC has similar toxicity to phosgene, alkylating agents, like alkyl halides, and worse, things like dimethyl sulfate, which is pretty lethal stuff, as well as a mutagen and carcinogen due to it's ability to alkylate DNA as well as what it was meant to alkylate if someone fails to be sufficiently careful. Cyanides, azides, cyanogen halides, isocyanates, isothiocyanates, all manner of shades of nasty goes in to making pharmaceuticals, it is not somehow different if, taking of course into account the need to purify and clean, by a clandestine chemist worth the name, it is not somehow different to the making of pharmaceuticals by big pharma.
So that argument fails, when looked at in any detail.
Not to mention that as I said, that was only one way to skin the cat. There are many. Reduction of pseudo or ephedrine using the Birch-Benkeser is one, reduction via the Nagai reduction (red phosphorus and iodine) or similar reductions using iodine and either phosphorous acid or hypophosphorous acid is well known as another.
And then there is P2P. 1-phenyl-2-propanone, also known as phenylacetone. This requires reductive amination, to produce meth, or N-ethylamphetamine, using alkyl/amine donors such as methylamine or ethylamine respectively, or else using nitromethane or nitroethane which undergo reduction in-situ to the alkylamines mentioned just above. Or, one can prepare a ketoxime from it, using hydroxylamine, which after purification, can be reduced by the Bouvealt-Blanc reduction, which involves slow addition of sodium metal to a solution of the ketoxime in anhydrous ethanol, which has to be very, very thoroughly dried, the typical dessication method for alcohols, drying over quicklime, doesn't get it dry enough, and the alcohol to be used needs the likes of molecular sieves, or/and a reflux over anhydrous calcium carbide, where water present reacts and turns to acetylene, reflux over a sacrificial amount of sodium or lithium metal, followed by distillation, forming an ethoxide, which of course ought to be saved, as alkoxides are useful.
So is it just meth made with 'fertilizer and butane and lithium batteries' that you have a problem with. Or does meth made via the Nagai reduction not bother you? or reductive amination of P2P, reduction of P2NP via excess borohydride to reduce the double bond then iron powder in HCl or GAA plus a catalytic quantity of ferric chloride to reduce the nitro group to an amine. This gives amphetamine, rather than meth however.
