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Fast is right. In any event, scehmes, especially MDMA and MethAmp. are all over the place.
Synchrojet, you do not need to be a chemist. Alot of the best illicit cooks are self taught. Marquardt? Completely self taught. Williamson, less chem than me. As far as smart, look at that fool Hovey. Here is a trained chemist workinfg for Dupont. He does a good run on 3-meth-fen and then tries to figure out who to sell it to. Seeing that a black guy works as a janitor in his building, he askes him if he would sell this nice heroin substitute for him. why? Because all blacks must sell drugs. The moron deserved to go to prison.
If one diligently does their homewrk and goes about it cautiously, they can make just about anything they want.