Merchants of Meth: How Big Pharma Keeps the Cooks in Business

[slimvictor]

With big profits on the line, the drug industry is pulling out campaign-style dirty tricks to keep selling the meds that cooks turn into crank.

THE FIRST TIME she saw her mother passed out on the living room floor, Amanda thought she was dead. There were muddy tracks on the carpet and the room looked like it had been ransacked. Mary wouldn't wake up. When she finally came to, she insisted nothing was wrong. But as the weeks passed, her 15-year-old daughter's sense of foreboding grew. Amanda's parents stopped sleeping and eating. Her once heavy mother turned gaunt and her father, Barry, stopped going to work. She was embarrassed to go into town with him; he was covered in open sores. A musty stink gripped their increasingly chaotic trailer. The driveway filled up with cars as strangers came to the house and partied all night.

Her parents' repeated assurances failed to assuage Amanda's mounting worry. She would later tell her mother it felt "like I saw an airplane coming in toward our house in slow motion and it was crashing." Finally, she went sleuthing online. The empty packages of cold medicine, the canisters of Coleman fuel, the smell, her parents' strange behavior all pointed to one thing. They were meth cooks. Amanda (last name withheld to protect her privacy) told her grandparents, who lived next door. Eventually, they called police.
Within minutes, agents burst into the trailer. They slammed Barry up against the wall, put a gun to his head, and hauled him and Mary off in handcuffs. It would be two and a half years before Amanda and her 10-year-old sister, Chrissie, would see their father again.

The year was 2005, and what happened to Amanda's family was the result of a revolution in methamphetamine production that was just beginning to make its way into Kentucky. Meth users called it the "shake- and-bake" or "one-pot" method, and its key feature was to greatly simplify the way meth is synthesized from pseudoephedrine, a decongestant found in cold and allergy medicines like Claritin D and Sudafed.


Shake and bake did two things. It took a toxic and volatile process that had once been the province of people with Breaking Bad-style knowledge of chemistry and put it in the bedrooms and kitchens of meth users in rural America. It also produced the most potent methamphetamine anywhere.

If anyone wondered what would happen if heroin or cocaine addicts suddenly discovered how to make their own supply with a handful of cheap ingredients readily available over the counter, methamphetamine's recent history provides an answer. Since 2007, the number of clandestine meth sites discovered by police has increased 63 percent nationwide. In Kentucky, the number of labs has more than tripled. The Bluegrass State regularly joins its neighbors Missouri, Tennessee, and Indiana as the top four states for annual meth lab discoveries.

As law enforcement agencies scramble to clean up and dispose of toxic labs, prosecute cooks, and find foster homes for their children, they are waging two battles: one against destitute, strung-out addicts, the other against some of the world's wealthiest and most politically connected drug manufacturers. In the past several years, lawmakers in 25 states have sought to make pseudoephedrine—the one irreplaceable ingredient in a shake-and-bake lab—a prescription drug. In all but two—Oregon and Mississippi—they have failed as the industry, which sells an estimated $605 million worth of pseudoephedrine-based drugs a year, has deployed all-star lobbying teams and campaign-trail tactics such as robocalls and advertising blitzes.

Perhaps nowhere has the battle been harder fought than in Kentucky, where Big Pharma's trade group has broken lobbying spending records in 2010 and 2012, beating back cops, doctors, teachers, drug experts, and lawmakers from both sides of the aisle. "It frustrates me to see how an industry and corporate dollars affect commonsense legislation," says Jackie Steele, a commonwealth's attorney whose district in southeastern Kentucky has been overwhelmed by meth labs in recent years.

cont at
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/08/meth-pseudoephedrine-big-pharma-lobby

 

[23536]

look bro pseudoephedrine is an excellent decongestant and the fact that it's OTC makes me not have to incur the expense of going to a doctor in order to be able to breathe well.

Also, methamphetamine should be OTC.

 

[poledriver]

Long article and loads of comments after it.

 

[my3rdeye]

As law enforcement agencies scramble to clean up and dispose of toxic labs, prosecute cooks, and find foster homes for their children,
--------------------

Ruining lives and stealing children is hard work.

 

[Docta]

You got to love the Big Phara lobby groups with there taking a stand for the rights of the individual to have access to pseudoephedrine.

Funny how Pfizer can take Methaqualone (Quaaludes) out of circulation at the drop of a hat in the 1980's but when asked to do the same and phase out with Pseudoephedrine (Sudafed) it was not a chance. Wonder how much of that was to do with revenue vs bad public relations. JB Roerig & Company division of Pfizer that marketed ludes said at the time "Quaalude accounted for less than 2% of our sales but created 98% of our headaches."

The tables were totally turned when it came to Sudafed, it was such a cash cow there was no way they were going to do the right thing. Apparently a big silo full of money can offset any amount of public relations blow back providing you employ enough spine doctors. It took the United States, section 711 of the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act of 2005 to stop Pfizer. Before anybody could catch there breath Pfizer quietly slid the rights over to one of the 200 and something subsidiaries of Johnson & Johnson in a deal that ended with Johnson & Johnson buying out the hole fucking company.

Johnson & Johnson are in the top 50 of the Fortune 500 you think there gonna give up pseudoephedrine, fuck no they spend money to make money.

Capitalism God Bless America

 

[drug_mentor]

I don't see how banning pseudoephedrine sales is "doing the right thing"? Where I live they have restricted pseudoephedrine purchases considerably and it has not reduced meth use at all, if anything from my observations it has continued to increase. I would also point out the phenylephrine shit they rolled out to largely replace pseudo is fucking useless in comparison.

Some people are always going to do the wrong thing, I don't see why everyone else should be penalised by not having easy access to a useful medication. All drug use should be legalised anyway, then amateur meth cooking would pretty much cease to be a problem as well as the plethora of other problems that are a direct result of drug prohibition.

I don't agree with a lot of shit that Big Pharma do, but if I lived in the US I would be glad that they are lobbying against its restriction as it really is a useful drug for its intended purpose.

 

[Thorns Have Roses]

The more you get in the way of American cooks, the more business you send to the Mexican Cartels.

 

[flat-line]

I live in the western US "bath tub crank" was very big here 10-20 years ago. It was was trash, 25-30% pure usually red, brown or yellow. Back then people could get pseudoephedrine cheap even order it by 1000s in the mail.

Now days Mexican meth is all over big cunks of meth that look like pieces of broken glass or cheap probably cheaper them making crank with cold pills. You almost never hear of meth "labs" getting busted these days. Pseudoephedrine is in expensive little packs you need an ID to get, I doubt it would be cost effective to go buy a few boxes all the rest of the stuff then make a big mess all for a couple of grams of trash crank.

I think they should just legalize it and let people make themselves crazy if they want.

 

[Crankinit]

Shake and bake did two things. It took a toxic and volatile process that had once been the province of people with Breaking Bad-style knowledge of chemistry and put it in the bedrooms and kitchens of meth users in rural America. It also produced the most potent methamphetamine anywhere.

What a load of crap on both accounts. Plenty of brain dead bikies manage to pump out meth with the old method, and I highly doubt that shake and bake is 'the most potent methamphetamine anywhere.'

 

[Twigs]

What a load of crap on both accounts. Plenty of brain dead bikies manage to pump out meth with the old method, and I highly doubt that shake and bake is 'the most potent methamphetamine anywhere.'

As far as I know, the biker meth was racemic. The pseudo method results in dextro-methamphetamine. I think thats what they mean by "most potent"

 

[Crankinit]

As far as I know, the biker meth was racemic. The pseudo method results in dextro-methamphetamine. I think thats what they mean by "most potent"

But d-meth was being made from pseudo before the shake & bake method came along wasn't it?

 

[bloodshed344]

Yes because the P2P meth made in Breaking Bad is enantiomerically pure, which I'm assuming is the D-enantiomer. It doesn't specify THAT on the show, but it does specify the fact it is enantiomerically pure.

 

[Docta]

What a load of crap on both accounts. Plenty of brain dead bikies manage to pump out meth with the old method, and I highly doubt that shake and bake is 'the most potent methamphetamine anywhere.'

Well you'd be right,

There is an impurity that is present in all reductions of pseudo/ephedrine to meth via alkaline metal. These route specific impurities are found in astonishingly large quantity's in shake and bake meth. The forensic chemist's assay samples all the time with route specific impurities making up 50% sometimes more of what is considered to be pure crystal. The concept that some idiot with a bag of cold pills and a Gatorade bottle can stop the further reduction of (+)-meth (N-methyl-1-phenylpropan-2-amine) to (2S)-1-(1,4-Cyclohexadien-1-yl)-N-methyl-2-propanamine is just ludicrous.


(2S)-1-(1,4-Cyclohexadien-1-yl)-N-methyl-2-propanamine is a route specific impurity that even the best chemists working with ACS reagents in a fully equipped lab get. How the hell does Joe Billy Ben Bob, in bumfuck nowhere produce the "most potent methamphetamine anywhere" equipped with shit they just picked up at Walmart. Sorry not going to happen, the yield from Shake&Bake is more about dumb luck then anything.

 

['medicine cabinet']

India is pumping out TONS of psuedo, there was that record cash seizure in mexico where they seized like 500 mil or something crazy, but it was an indian businessman who owned a chem supply company that supplied the cartels with the psuedo. Im sure a ton comes from china too.

 

[23536]

Looks like Walmart and Amazon pulled ephedrine products from their websites. Those used to be my sources (I don't make meth; I eat the ephedrine for physical energy).

Is there a reason people hustle to get unextracted pseudo pills when pure ephedrine is available by the kilo? Is pseudo a superior precursor?

 

[bloodshed344]

Looks like Walmart and Amazon pulled ephedrine products from their websites. Those used to be my sources (I don't make meth; I eat the ephedrine for physical energy).

Is there a reason people hustle to get unextracted pseudo pills when pure ephedrine is available by the kilo? Is pseudo a superior precursor?

Well I suppose if pseudoephedrine really does make pure D-meth then ephedrine probably makes pure L-meth.

However does a P2P cook really yield racemic meth? In BB Walter says his P2P cook yields a meth that is different than street meth, it is enantiomerically pure. Gus' friend also says that his recipe for meth yields a different type of product. He says something along the lines of "It's chirality is different, this new stuff is more powerful and pure."

So does pseudo really yield pure D-meth? and does P2P really yield racemic meth? I guess looking at the chemical structures points to yes for both, but I'm no chemist!

 

[23536]

This is organic chemistry discussion, not synthesis discussion.

Methylamine adds to either side of the carbonyl carbon on P2P. Look at it: it's identical from the front and from the back:

Think of methylamine like a hawk swooping down on a chihuahua. It doesn't make a difference whether the hawk attacks the chihuahua's left side or right side. All that matters is that the hawk grabs the dog by where the harness attaches to the shoulders (in the model, where the black ball attaches to the red ball). Therefore, methylamine adding to P2P will produce racemic meth.

Walt then resolves the enantiomers in a separate step. So even though his meth is close to 100% pure, his key reaction gets less than a 50% yield. He has to discard at least half of his product because it's L-meth.

It's summarized in this article:

http://www.vice.com/read/a-comprehensive-guide-to-cooking-meth-on-breaking-bad

Despite using reductive amination, Walt implies his product is enantiomerically pure in “Box cutter” (S.4E.1). He asks Victor, “If our reduction is not stereospecific, then how can our product be enantiomerically pure?” Since he's not a chemist, Victor was unable to answer, and anyways, before he could try, Gus slits his throat with a box cutter. Unfortunately, we don’t know if Walt is just bluffing to try and save his and Jessie’s life. If Walt’s product is pure d-methamphetamine, we can assume he must use some technique to separate or “resolve” the isomers, because the starting material is not chiral and the reduction not stereospecific. Crystallography, derivatization with a chiral group followed by physical separation, and chiral chromatography are three possibilities. Crystallography is relatively easy and high yielding, and the resolving agent can be recycled, making it a green option. We also know that Walt has professional experience in crystallography, further pointing to this method.

 

[psood0nym]

I don't see how banning pseudoephedrine sales is "doing the right thing"? Where I live they have restricted pseudoephedrine purchases considerably and it has not reduced meth use at all, if anything from my observations it has continued to increase.

I don't like it when prohibition tactics "win," but it's hard to deny that the reduction in local meth labs and all the crime and destitution they bring with them isn't a good overall thing. This is what the article stated about the effect of it in Oregon:

Since the bill became law in 2006, the number of meth labs found in Oregon has fallen 96 percent. Children are no longer being pulled from homes with meth labs, and police officers have been freed up to pursue leads instead of cleaning up labs and chasing smurfers. In 2008, Oregon experienced the largest drop in violent-crime rates in the country. By 2009, property crime rates fell to their lowest in 43 years. That year, overall crime in Oregon reached a 40-year low. The state's Criminal Justice Commission credited the pseudoephedrine prescription bill, along with declining meth use, as key factors.

That's a pretty massive effect that really does seem to owe a lot to the change in law. As far as reducing access is concerned, even if stopping local labs only moves more of the market to the cartels, it's hard to imagine cartels in every Podunk little town that meth currently devastates. Try scoring other drugs sourced internationally in some of these same little towns that meth is easy to come by in. It would lower access, to a point.

I would also point out the phenylephrine shit they rolled out to largely replace pseudo is fucking useless in comparison.

This is true. There's no other oral OTC medication I know of that is as remotely effective as pseudoephedrine. Sprays and nasal inhalers work better than pseudoephedrine, so they're still a legit option. However, one of them (Vicks) is L-meth, another (Benzedrex) is hexahydromethamphetamine, which orally or extracted and smoked gives lots of people a meth-like high on its own, and the only "not meth" one in the U.S., oxymetazoline, can't be used more than a few times in short succession without rebound congestion that's worse than any allergies can cause. Still, there are very effective alternative OTC options that aren't precursors to meth.

Some people are always going to do the wrong thing, I don't see why everyone else should be penalised by not having easy access to a useful medication. All drug use should be legalised anyway, then amateur meth cooking would pretty much cease to be a problem as well as the plethora of other problems that are a direct result of drug prohibition.

I don't agree with a lot of shit that Big Pharma do, but if I lived in the US I would be glad that they are lobbying against its restriction as it really is a useful drug for its intended purpose.

I agree that recreational drugs should be legalized, but meth is one of those especially nasty ones in terms of the degree of collateral damage that comes with its use. I think drugs like meth should be available legally to those who have earned a license to prove they understand harm reduction strategies associate with their use, and a system similar to that used to impose sales rate limits on pseudoephedrine in many states should be used to limit recreational drug purchases. Requiring a license and imposing rate-of-purchase/quantity limits tethered to those licenses (which could also be revoked) would make it extremely difficult for people to buy recreational drugs often enough to develop or sustain addictions on a wide scale. Ideally, people could limit their use on their own, but many can't, and their addictions destroy people's lives who have nothing to do with the personal choice to use drugs. Drug use is a personal choice ... until it starts effecting others. I want people to be able to get high in moderation, but I'm not sure I agree with what many other Bluelighters seem to think: that people should be free to use at a rate that often turns them into clear burdens on their families/children and society.