No, I've been clued in to some new data, and I honestly have to abandon the likelihood of iso-contamination on any level that it would get noticed even, let alone become "widespread".
TL;DR – I think if you're like me, then years ago you may have become used to having only d-isomer meth which is preferable to the 50/50 blend of d-isomer and l-isomer meth chemically referred to as "racemic". And if one is used to d-meth and compares it to dl-meth, I'll bet that could account for a lot, if not most, of what gets attributed to "widespread n-iso contamination", but it's just a hypothesis, conjecture.
Petty disputes aside (and I apologize for my part in said disputes),
@Atomic_Decay makes some valid points. AD also is connected academically and isn't stymied by a paywall the way my cheap ass is, and AD's been gracious enough to look into this paper for us. For reals, I am grateful that he's shed some light on the subject and pointed out how slipshod that Chinese paper actually is, and how China had to crackdown recently on the number of poor-quality, marginally peer-reviewed academic papers being churned out there as they don't hold to a sufficient academic threshold/criteria for globally competitive academics.
In other words, that paper is mad suspect, and while n-iso contamination has occured in the past, it's does not make much financial sense and the claim isn't backed up by much in the way of solid data.
If nothing else, money is the motivator and dl-meth prevalence is the culprit.
I honestly think, similar to MDMA, none of us can know for sure whether meth differs now from ten or twenty or more years ago just based on
subjective experience, because:
science. Anecdotes might hint at a thing, or they might be red-herring-esque distractions.
Without a time machine, all we can do is guess. But my best guess is that if we're truly perceiving an actual difference in the gear now vs that of yesteryear, I'm dubious that it's because of the involvement of n-iso or any similar, substituted benzylamine compound. Believe me, I understand the tendency to think n-iso is fucking shit up, but the facts don't really add up there beyond to say that it seems like n-iso was the "on-trend" meth cut all the
cool dealers were into back in two thousand and late. Lol. But no, I'd say this practice
is not common enough to warrant concern now and/or over the past decade. MSM seems more likely, and my current pet theory is that what we're seeing now is just a shitload of racemic meth, stuff that is 50% d-isomer and 50% l-isomer, the latter of which is functionally just a bronchial dilator with some stimmy body buzz effects though nothing approaching euphoria or cognitive noteworthiness.
If you compare this to even some shake-and-bake produced meth with a good follow-up cleaning and recrystallization, that gear will beat the brakes off racemic cartel/syndicate meth imports just by virtue of the shake-and-bake stuff being d-isomer only, all other things equal.
I just read through the
DEA's 2020 National Drug Threat Assessment and the
vast majority of meth they've confiscated in the past decade has been overwhelmingly high-quality and high-purity, though mostly
still a racemic blend, just a very clean racemate. It said that some 87% of the meth in the U.S. is made from one of two telltale methods both of which are p-2-p methods, meaning in short that approximately 87% of U.S. meth is a 50/50 blend of the two optical isomers, d-methamphetamine and l-methamphetamine. I'll
spare the rest of the deets since this is the BDD forum, but should you be interested in learning more, run a search for that DEA 2020 National Drug Threat Assessment and read that puppy for yourself. It's unreal the crusade anti-drug people have going on. And for what? The unattainable goal of global drug eradication? Lol, yeah right.
I mean that in the nicest possible way.
