This is not some secret inside information. He synthesized this batch of of sheer curiosity and to see how interested the market was in the compound. He is active on other forums where you would expect to see chemists discussing these type of things which is how I know.
I feel the fact that the compound not being explicitly controlled was at least one driver. However you consider it, production requires inputs and yields are low. I DO think that a solution in absolute ethanol a
very well considered touch. It does appear that parentheral administation represents the vast majority of deaths so a formulation that makes that tougher is good sense.
But didn't the NBOMes get banned because of the deaths? Buyers were not buying so a legal, less potent homologue in a safer formulation sounds like someone who has studied formulation of drugs. I found it a deadly dull module but 1 drop per dose and finding (or having made) containers that allow that dosing speaks of effort to do the thing right.
Of course, this is now the 'mystery liquid game' and if someone was sat on an unsalable, illegal NBome, misrepresentation would seem an obvious step to maximizing profit. I don't say it is, but one must consider ALL of the possibilities.
Just months ago I was asked to look at something misrepresented as ketamine and it turned out to be 3-MeO-PCE. Luckily the person handed it in so we got instrumentation. Now as far as I know it's about an order of magnitude more potent than ketamine so on the face of it, makes no sense. But it DID fool presumptive tests and certainly is far simpler to make. So UNLESS someone has the instrumental data, it remains the MLG.
BTW CC 3-MeO PCE I did consider the various scenarios, calculated costs and so on and concluded that a Chinese supplier reverted to type i.e. 能骗就骗. because two synthetic steps is easier than five synthetic steps. I have mentioned before that long, long ago when the N-ethyl homolgue of ketamine was legal a Chinese supplier attempted to offer us 'etamine' and sent a sample. So we did the usual GC-MS/NMR pair and it was the
para chloro homologue (VERY obvious since you get just two aromatic peaks) but saving face is important in Chinese culture so we simply said our instrumentation differs from yours, please can we compare. So they went away, came back and simply offered the same thing at a (much) lower price.
I do find myself repeating that the BEST you can reasonably expect from a supplier is caution i.e. if something isn't causing harm, it remains legal for longer to their net benefit. But while not per se illegal, from what I know of North American law enforcement, they will still try to give producers and distributers as much static as possible e.g. arrest and remand then keep putting off the trial date so people get to enjoy Club Fed for a year at which point everything has been seized and sold (inclusing home, vehicles, antiques and so on via civil asset forfeiture/civil forfeiture) BEFORE conviction.
So the idea of someone knocking the stuff up out of pure altruism does not play. Fancy packaging of LSD in Australia is another recent example. It turns out Swiss law has a loophole and that a doctor can obtain a licence to buy the stuff with nothing akin to the two-man rule used by most nations - that just means if you drop a drug or otherwise render it unusable, two people have to sign the destruction register. I'm also keenly aware that the Swiss are a cleanly, money loving, Christian, money loving, conservative, money loving nation. Taxes are high but somewhat akin to the Chinese, as long as something doesn't turn up 'at home', the respective governments don't look too hard as long as tax is paid.
I have learnt a few things from old-timers and paying all taxes is often the tell. Idiots making a fortune will often think that if they get away with one crime, they can get away with two, but Al Capone is a good example of someone who did just that and got jailed for tax. Any LEGAL company has a proper structure, real deductables (with reciepts) and real profits which are taxable - if Customs and Excise get onto a person, they have more powers than the police. Search warrents? Not needed. BUT if they walk in and see what goes on, they surely WILL tell the local feds.
Others have mentioned this but given how many classes of RC contain a basic nitrogen moiety, the logical step is to 'protect' that amine with a BOC which renders it totally inactive until boiled in water at which point the BOC is cleaved and you end up with product + carbon dioxide + tert-butyl alcohol. If I know this I assume everyone else does. Sure, you can add them all (thousands) to the list of 'watched' precursors but when does that become unworkable? It could likewise be distributed as a solution but an aspirator and water bath (your kitchen sink) will remove the water and the alcohol. I am actually surprised this hasn't been spotted OR it has but mention of it could see a truly VAST wave of quite legal intermediates being shipped.
www.em-consulte.com
). It is one of several entirely inactive precursors that are nonsensically under the slimy control of the CSA. Interestingly though, 25H-NBOH appears to be active (see supplementary table 11 in this paper which is also a fascinating paper in general), so perhaps the lack of reductive selectivity would yield an interesting combo of active NBOHs. Maybe a borohydride reduction would more selectively reduce the imine? Although I guess we should avoid any synthesis talk
