NEWS: Drug Syndicates Making Own Ingredients

New South Wales police are concerned about an emerging trend among illegal drug syndicates, who are avoiding detection by making their own ingredients.

The concern follows a raid on a drug laboratory on the state's mid-north coast, which police are describing as one of the largest they have encountered:

Police say drug squad detectives found the clandestine laboratory during the raid early yesterday on a property at Nabiac, near Taree.

They seized 1.5 kilograms of pure methamphetamine, or speed, worth an estimated $2.5 million.

Detective Inspector Paul Willingham says the 450 kilograms of illegal drug ingredients also recovered, highlight a recent disturbing pattern.

"The actual ingredients that are normally purchased are, this particular syndicate were making themselves to avoid being detected," he said.

Two men in their 50s living on site have been charged with manufacturing a commercial quantity of the drug.

A woman, also in her 50s, has been charged with being knowingly involved with the manufacture.

All three have been refused bail, and are due to appear in the Port Macquarie Local Court tomorrow.


taken from http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200406/s1130966.htm

was also in the SMH today.

i wonder what synth they were using to make the meth...

so, what? they were making decongestants and drain cleaner?

certainly possible, but seems like a lot of effort... but ya never know what those evil drug manufacturers will do.

Well , of course drug syndicates are going to implement ways of making their operations easier and less susceptible to the police. Going out and trying to bust every drug syndicate is only going to slow the drug trade down, not destroy it.

there's a photo of the two bags of chemicals found at one site in the paper today, will try and get an image of it if I cant find it online later...

In my opinion it isn't an uncommon approach, and is certainly a safer one for manufacturers. Instead of going for direct precursors, they are going for precursors to precursors, one level down. This is obviously more synth work, but allows for chemicals to be obtained that are not on the watch lists as being a precursor for potentially illicit substances. These base materials would also have many broad purposes that would also attract less attention.

is it just me or are there an alarmingly large number of homes warranted for searches in these last months.

I think there is a loose-lip sinking these ships !

Damn fine chemists put away.

These guys wouldn't be stupid in their chemistry or organisational skills. Sounds like someone wanted them out, or someone could keep their mouth shut.

So they were buying ephedra buy the tonne and extracting ephedrine? Canyou buy ephedra from chinese medicine shops ?

I've been saying this for ages. And not just with producing Meth, but with MDMA and other drugs as well.

The thing is, there's virtually no limit to what can be made from scratch.


For example, 2nd year organic chem will tell you that sugar, made from water and carbon dioxide, can produce endless chemicals.

Sugar --yeast--> ethanol + methanol + propanol + acetone + ethyl acetate......etc etc.

The alcolols can be made to react with the acetate and acetone which also react with themselves in basic condition to form aldol condensation products which will then undergo Robinson annulations to produce large ring structures.


Getting back to Meth; the routes are numerous. You can start with a simple linear non-aromatic amino acid, benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, phenol, aniline, benzaldehyde, benzoic acid ...etc etc, and that's just a few of the basic, from scratch routes. They are just too numerous to list completely. The other chems can be made from all sorts of things found commonly in hardware stores, supermarkets, motoring accessory shops, ceramic and pottery supplies, paint and modelling shops, etc etc.


For those cooks who are either limited in their abilities, or are just lazy, and want something closer (like ephedrine) there's always decarboxylation of phenylalanine --> amphetamine. It's not easy to do according to reports, but that doesn't mean it isn't done by someone or a group who figured it out. Methylation to Meth is also not that difficult to achieve.


Another prediction I made was the path some producers would likely turn to in response to the recent tightening of pseudofed. Extraction of pseudo + alkaloids from Ephedra or ma Huang for an amphetamine or Meth precursor. I don't know about now, but I'm sure there would be considerable quantities of ephedra still being imported into Australia. It is a big one in Chinese medicine, so someone is bound to have stock piles somewhere.

The thing is though, getting the pseudo separated from the other alkaloids looks like it would be difficult as they're all so close in structure and solubilities. So most cooks probably don't bother, especially seeing that some of these will produce amines with some bioactivity - not necessarily desirable effects from a user perspective though.


I'm not saying that such procedures can't be very well done, it's just that the extra time and patience is probably too much for those solely interested in returns. I'd also bet that many cooks wouldn't distill or further purify OTC products when making MDMA. Taking for granted that stuff intended for much less stringent applications is pure enough for MDMA. It's been said many times, every extra step or process involved in synthesizing a drug/precursor/reagent introduces a variable. Without at least starting from a pure material, if it can't be analyzed correctly there's no telling what may be produced.

Again, with no Q - Q it's the user who ultimately suffers


I guess I can scoff at those who make illicit drugs, as I've never contemplated it or even been tempted. I have to admit though, I do have a certain admiration for the ingenious improvisers, those who spend the time to discover or refine methods of preparing interesting things from innocuous substances. Chemistry is still chemistry; whether it's pretty coloured gemstones or drugs we're talking about %)


hee...hee I wrote this some time ago, before the last post, but a visitor interrupted before I hit reply. Seems the ephedra is on the money

well said phase_dancer

phase_dancer's right. It's a simple thing to do - meth inparticular, and MDMA wouldnt be much harder. Sure, you might need slightly more exotic equipment or reagents, but if you planned to do it on a big enough scale, I'm sure it would be well worth it... lol - I can just imagne a big time meth cook sitting around scraping off thousands of matchboxes to red the red phosphorous needed (of course, with there being a multitude of other routes, that's just silly! I like the image, though!)

I remember reading something somewhere about using yeast to synthesis the desired optical isomer of ephedrine (damned if i can remember which one that is, mind you!) from benzaldehyde (almond oil). And you could make benzaldehyde from toluene easily enough... two step process from a common solvent to ephedrine, which is a reduction away from meth!

I agree with phase_dancer, I think making drugs by the established routes would have to be boring - it's much more fun when you have to design your own synthetic schemes! I'm fairly sure I'll never try it, seeing as how I get enough lab time, and I value my freedom!! But a few friends and I were discussing recently just how many people in our synthetic chemistry class would be making drugs, either now or at some point in the future...

Witch Doctor said:

i wonder what synth they were using to make the meth...

Click to expand...

Phenol Acetone Yes

BenWiFFen said:

Phenol Acetone Yes

Click to expand...

BenWiFFen; taht was a delayed reply. ha

With all these random cooks exploring for knew ways to produce fun things from all sorts of things.

Makes me think

Does the drugs war spur people on towards creating new techniques and further research rather than people using the same recipes?

Does the drugs war spur people on towards creating new techniques and further research rather than people using the same recipes?

Click to expand...

Definitely. The moment something is restricted, listed as a suspicious item, or gets removed from supermarket shelves, people will think of ways to obtain it from other sources. This may be either directly - by extraction, isolation etc - or by synthesizing it from more easy to obtain things.

Once upon a time the ketone route to amphetamines was virtually the only one used by producers. Eventually, the precursor was scheduled in the US which over time became a western world trend. Producers then searched for other ways to make speed. While the ephedrine routes had been in the literature for decades (pretty basic org chem) they were only 'rediscovered' and employed by drug producers when the old method was no longer an option.

Now that restrictions have been placed on chemicals used in drug manufacture, producers have undoubtedly resorted to over the counter products that contain them (or from which they can be made). Other approaches see different routes employed, or alternative and often more dangerous drugs being made from easier to obtain materials e.g. PMA.

Although this has been a trend for the past few decades, things have changed markedly in recent times, facilitated largely by the internet. Selecting unscheduled drugs or experimenting to find new candidates to replace the difficult to get drugs is already happening; some would say at a frightening pace. These compounds are likely to be produced legally [?] in places such as India and China by companies that also produce pharmaceutical, agricultural or industrial chemicals. Importing these chems may remain a safer bet for drug barons, as, with an arsenal of compounds, they can simply change to another product as soon as one is made illegal. While designer and analogue legislation aims to curb this sort of thing, it's rarely acted on, and the smarter producers are looking at compounds that are structurally different enough to get around the already comprehensive law.

Of course all this poses difficulties for implementing successful HR intervention strategies as little is often known about the pharmacology of these new drugs.

phantasmal said:

I remember reading something somewhere about using yeast to synthesis the desired optical isomer of ephedrine (damned if i can remember which one that is, mind you!) from benzaldehyde (almond oil). And you could make benzaldehyde from toluene easily enough... two step process from a common solvent to ephedrine, which is a reduction away from meth!

Click to expand...

This is a similar reaction to how one makes alcohol thru fermentation... with a reaction that common being a possibility in making MA, the war on drugs can never ever be won. Yet this alcohol stuff (a drug, right?) is freely being able to be made like this -- go figure.

Insterestingly enough reduction of cinnamin oil with an inorganic reductant also forms benzylallyl.

The only way they can win this war on drugs is bringing in a law banning phenol/benzyl groups