Even before the COVID drought, most of us have been told by authorities that the purity of methamphetamine, even at street level, has never been higher.
So why then does this never seem to translate into the most amazing meth experiences in a decade? Well the answer appears to be in the route of manufacture and in particular whether all of this high purity meth is actually straight D-meth or is in fact a 50:50 racemic mixture of D and L meth, produced from P2P.
Well take a look at the attached Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission’s report on the Illicit Drug trends for 2018-2019, released on 30/09/2020:
ACIC illicit drugs report 2018-2019
Now go to pages 33 to 35 of this report and be floored just like I was. For years we thought we were largely spared the P2P produced form of meth, which without expensive resolution of the enantiomers, results in a much poorer 50:50 mix of the dextro and levo forms of methamphetamine.
Looking at the two tables, especially the top one, from 2010 to 2016, you had anywhere between a 60% to 82% chance of getting meth produced from pseudoephedrine or ephedrine; and therefore, almost certainly methamphetamine containing only D-meth, regardless of how pure your sample actually was. Importantly, the chances of obtaining basic P2P racemic meth over the same time period, was anywhere from 5% (or 1 in 20) in 2010 to 23% (or 1 in 4) in 2013.
Move forward to 2017 to 2019 and the extent to which P2P produced methamphetamine as compared to the much preferred pseudo/ephedrine produced meth, has skyrocketed enormously; such that you are now somewhat fortunate to be able to score straight D-meth by chance in any given sample you might encounter. In 2019 for example, you had a 34% chance of obtaining methamphetamine which had only been produced from pseudo/ephedrine and therefore likely only D-meth, which putting it another way, for every three meth samples out there, only about 1 out of every 3 was the one we all wanted. Likewise, the percentage of P2P produced meth was now a minimum of 42% of all seizures, or almost 1 in 2 of all samples one might have been offered.
There is no reason in 2020 to assume that the trend has gone back the other way and I suspect the proportion of P2P as against pseudo/ephedrine produced meth, has only increased.
These results cannot be ignored when considering the different subjective effects across different batches of methamphetamine, so much of which is generally found to be of “high purity”. However, the “purity” of the meth says nothing about the extent to which it contains 100% D-meth, a 50:50 mixture, or worse still even a greater than 50% amount of L-meth (this latter situation being IMO the real culprit behind the continual claims of large amounts of isobenzylamine in Australian meth).
Now, whilst I’m well aware that in the last short while the quality and likely potency of meth (i.e. the % of dextro meth in the sample) has increased somewhat in this country, I for one did not appreciate that there had otherwise been a change of this magnitude to P2P meth in recent years and had thought we had been spared some of the problems being faced by meth users in USA. Well think again everyone and, remember, not all meth is created equal!
So why then does this never seem to translate into the most amazing meth experiences in a decade? Well the answer appears to be in the route of manufacture and in particular whether all of this high purity meth is actually straight D-meth or is in fact a 50:50 racemic mixture of D and L meth, produced from P2P.
Well take a look at the attached Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission’s report on the Illicit Drug trends for 2018-2019, released on 30/09/2020:
ACIC illicit drugs report 2018-2019
Now go to pages 33 to 35 of this report and be floored just like I was. For years we thought we were largely spared the P2P produced form of meth, which without expensive resolution of the enantiomers, results in a much poorer 50:50 mix of the dextro and levo forms of methamphetamine.
Looking at the two tables, especially the top one, from 2010 to 2016, you had anywhere between a 60% to 82% chance of getting meth produced from pseudoephedrine or ephedrine; and therefore, almost certainly methamphetamine containing only D-meth, regardless of how pure your sample actually was. Importantly, the chances of obtaining basic P2P racemic meth over the same time period, was anywhere from 5% (or 1 in 20) in 2010 to 23% (or 1 in 4) in 2013.
Move forward to 2017 to 2019 and the extent to which P2P produced methamphetamine as compared to the much preferred pseudo/ephedrine produced meth, has skyrocketed enormously; such that you are now somewhat fortunate to be able to score straight D-meth by chance in any given sample you might encounter. In 2019 for example, you had a 34% chance of obtaining methamphetamine which had only been produced from pseudo/ephedrine and therefore likely only D-meth, which putting it another way, for every three meth samples out there, only about 1 out of every 3 was the one we all wanted. Likewise, the percentage of P2P produced meth was now a minimum of 42% of all seizures, or almost 1 in 2 of all samples one might have been offered.
There is no reason in 2020 to assume that the trend has gone back the other way and I suspect the proportion of P2P as against pseudo/ephedrine produced meth, has only increased.
These results cannot be ignored when considering the different subjective effects across different batches of methamphetamine, so much of which is generally found to be of “high purity”. However, the “purity” of the meth says nothing about the extent to which it contains 100% D-meth, a 50:50 mixture, or worse still even a greater than 50% amount of L-meth (this latter situation being IMO the real culprit behind the continual claims of large amounts of isobenzylamine in Australian meth).
Now, whilst I’m well aware that in the last short while the quality and likely potency of meth (i.e. the % of dextro meth in the sample) has increased somewhat in this country, I for one did not appreciate that there had otherwise been a change of this magnitude to P2P meth in recent years and had thought we had been spared some of the problems being faced by meth users in USA. Well think again everyone and, remember, not all meth is created equal!
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