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News: Drug lab found in Sydney home, say police

apollo

Bluelighter
Joined
Apr 24, 2001
Messages
2,422
Location
sydney
July 24 2003

An amphetamines laboratory was uncovered in a police raid on an inner-western Sydney home overnight.

Drug squad officers found a medium-sized active lab - set up to manufacture speed - in the laundry of the Granville house.

Investigators also located about 100 different acids and solvents, equipment used to extract pseudoephedrine, a large quantity of cold and flu tablets, and a replica firearm.

Police said it was the seventh such drug laboratory to be uncovered in Sydney over the past month.

A 38-year-old man was taken into custody overnight and was expected to appear in Parramatta Local Court today for knowingly taking part in the manufacture of a large commercial quantity of an illicit drug.

Not a particularly exciting story, but I thought the bit about seven drug labs busted in Sydney in the last month to be worth sharing...

:)
 
It certainly does appear as though they are turning up the heat on drug manufacturing throughout Australia. Tis a pity really.
 
The pseudoephedrine for the purpose of turning it into methamphetamine. They arent selling the pseudoephedrine! ;)
 
First of all methamphetamine is not 4-meth. I don't know what you mean here. Could you be thinking of 4-MAR?

Secondly, many of the people on this board, although not involved in producing, nevertheless DO understand how meth is made.

You are correct in saying meth can be made from pseudoephedrine, but little if any locally made meth is made via the method you mention.
A similar method involves hypophosphorous acid, and this has without doubt been the method of choice for most Aussie cooks. Why?

Availability of the reactants

With the shortage of pseudo today, it's not unheard of for speed dealers to be also selling the acid. Where the acid originates from I would rather not say, only to mention it is made from very easy to get materials.

Although your article suggests using red phosphorous from match boxes, the content of phosphorus has been reduced dramatically with the sparing coating that each box is currently given. Someone may do it once, but I would find it hard to believe anyone would do this regularly, especially when yields are general way lower than with the hypo method.

In reality meth can be made from many things, largely depending upon available resources and competence of the cook.


It will be interesting to see what will happen when these big syndicates are completely broken up. 20 years ago it could well be expected that this would limit meth availability. However with the vast internet resources on hand today, I would guess that many smaller producers will pop up. I have heard it said that some groups are making their own due to fluctuating supplies. Imagine how hard those would be to catch, when their product is only spread between a half dozen friends. I can’t really see this as being better for the health of users generally, but you never know. More care goes into home cooking after all ;)

You can't go past Rhodium if you want to read of reliable and proven methods of drug manufacture.
 
Most of the meth in australia is manufactured by the banditos and rebels, and to a lesser extent, the comancheros (sp?). The cops may bust a few people making the shit in their laundry now and then because it looks good for the press but dont think that will limit the amount of meth available. These are only small players, theres no way theyre about to try busting up a bikie clubhouse to shut down a meth lab.
 
I was under the impression that the low quality pasty shit is locally made and most rock is imported. I'm sure there is local rock, but low quality stuff woul be more common.
 
yeah definitely.

there have been heaps of labs discovered by the cops in sydney recently.

the funniest bust i read about was where the cook was overcome with fumes whilst cooking up a batch. these fumes supposedly put the cook into a paranoid psychotic state.....which made him ring the cops for help.....:)

can't find a link.
 
Some interesting forensic info

Two recent court cases revealed some interesting information on meth quality:

First case: multi-KILOGRAM bust - very significant; 45-55% pure.
This is a clear demonstration of how mediocre the quality of meth in this country where it is not crystal or "ice".
This guy was near the top of the food chain for sure - it is true that it may have been cut slightly by him ready for distribution, or by the cook, but there is no way it is that much for 5-6kg amounts!
So even with a 20% cut, there is 25-35% worth of impurities in there. Its likely the cut was not that high however, so the impurities are even greater.
A lot of this impurity would be unreacted pseudoephedrine but there are many potentially other dangerous things in there.

A more interesting case was where someone got busted with AMPHETAMINE and METHYLAMPHETAMINE at the same time in two separate lots.
My theory on this is that he was selling "ice" and powdered speed together - this is clearly been happening of late since the enormous quantities of ice first appeared throughout the country. Its doubtful anyone is running around with two different powders in two different source bags so it is likely one is in a different form - "ice". This is of course the methylamphetamine in this case.
This means the powdered speed was amphetamine, and further proof that amphetamine is out there, albeit in a minor way.


All this information is public information, you just must be in the court room or have access to the transcripts to see what the prosecutor has to say. The identity of the drugs and the purities are ALWAYS read out.
Indeed, I actually now believe that it is through the Courts (whether at trial or during sentencing) that interested people can obtain highly valued forensic analysis, that normally would not be able to be seen by them.
 
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Robert Rollie: Most Bluelighters are aware of this fact; i think most people would agree I certainly am aware of it. Its been debated at infinitum.

It has been decided that calling 4-MAR ICE anymore is extremely misleading and actually implies to others that it is quite common - it isnt.
By misleading i mean assuming someone means 4-MAR when they simply use ICE.

Ice is slang, and for that reason whatever "ice" means on the street is what ice means in here. Ice no longer means 4-MAR out there, so i dont see how we can possibly enforce it meaning 4-MAR in here. For BLs we should use 4-MAR anyway.
Ice is used to describe the apperance of something - so it is always going to be used by people to describe gear that has this apperance, whatever substance it really is.

This is why at Bluelight we do our best to state the chemical identity of the drug.
You will see that throughout my post I put ice in quotations - "ice".
In the context of my post it is clear when i said "ice" i meant the very well crystallised, rock-salt like methamphetamine, that the majority of people like to smoke, that is presently and for some time, all over the country.

You are correct and we would all agree with you - saying ice without other descriptives is certainly a no no; i used methamphetamine in conjunction with it and i needed the "ice" tag to convey to everyone what form of the many possiblities this methamphetamine came in - and unfortunately it is the one tag everyone UNDERSTANDS the best.
 
actually i disagree, i think its a good idea to promote individual identities for different drugs. I think that calling 4-MAR ice is perfectly correct, that is what 4-MAR has always been refered to afaik, in the same way MDMA is ecstacy.

Sure, not everyone who says theyre selling ice is selling 4-MAR, but then not everyone who says theyre selling ecstacy is selling MDMA either, frequently speed and ketamine are passed off as ecstacy tablets. This doesnt mean its a bad idea to call MDMA ecstacy, it just mean people need to be more concious of the differences and above all SMART about who you buy from and what you buy. When you buy a pill, you should ideally test it first, or at the very least before you take it. Real ice IS very difficult to find, so the intelligent thing to assume is that in most cases anyone claiming to sell ice probably isnt.

Use your head people.
 
Are we all fighting on the same side here? I think you've both got similar ideas about what terminology's appropriate. As long as everyone is clear about what drug is being discussed, there should be no problem. When the nomenclature obscures the message, then we should take issue with it.

BigTrancer :)
 
Let's just call everything by its REAL chemical name (or shortened version as in meth, MDMA, 4-MAR). That solves all problems.

Down with slang!
 
This conversatoin was hard for me to follow. Maybe i should try some meth/ice so that my interest will be stimulated.

:\
 
I agree BT; it is a shame that what i felt was interesting and rare information has been overshadowed by this never-ending discussion.
As for the nomenclature obscuring the message that is the exact reason why ICE alone can never be used to describe 4-MAR anymore.

As negro-kitty said, only the chemical names should be used; however when that chemical can come in a multitude of forms, what else can one do but use a descriptor in addition to the chemical name.
In the context of the current drug climate, my descriptor was the obvious and correct choice.

I feel the ecstasy analogy is poor; the majority of pills sold as ecstasy contain MDMA or at least MDXX. The overwhelming majority of drug sold as "ice" is not 4-MAR.

Anyway i personally have little more to say on the matter which is way off topic as it is.
 
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