Channeling C A R Alders-Wright, Martha Stewart, Julia Child, and Pongratz & Zirm

[Nicomorphinist]

I wrote a post about the New Zealand homebake process for making smack which was specific enough to be frozen as it looked like synthesis talk, which was certainly fair enough as I wasn't all that sure exactly where the boundary was . . .

However, my main question was actually political and para-political: is the rumour that the final or penultimate step is to mix the chemicals and ignite the mixture, presumably leaving a mixture of water soluble and insoluble chemicals. Since it appears that so doing is unhelpful (I could also be 30 to 100 per cent wrong about this) it is possible that this bit of information is actually misinformation. Given that a lot of information about the New Zealand labs comes from places like the NZCOS, Immigrations & Customs Enforcement, Customs & Excise, Indian Military Intelligence Service, RCMP, INCB, Gendarmerie Nationale, Mup, GCSE, Bundesnachrichtendienst, FSB, Interpol, MI5, MI6, and the DEA and many others, and especially since the latter and other US law enforcement groups in particular have depended on silence and disinformation when it comes to opium and its direct relatives for 100 years, could that little tidbit be misinformation that results in a nearly or totally useless charred mess?

 

[sekio]

You can definitely acetylate morphine by covering it with acetic anhydride and lighting it on fire but common sense would tell you that yields would be poor at best.

A better route is baking the mixture in an oven or any other slightly more controlled method of heating.

On second thought, the NZ method is a waste of time and effort anyway, who wants to work with Pyr.HCl? Boron tribromide at -35C? These are not reagents that you can handle as if you were baking a batch of butter tarts. And then you get the ~30% yield, and the reaction is wholly unscalable, etc.

Let's just say there are better ways of making more potent morphine alkaloids out of codeine.

silence and disinformation when it comes to opium and its direct relatives for 100 years

except for the huge amount of big pharma research into mu- and kappa- opioid ligands as novel painkillers, in the hope that one day there'll be the holy grail of opioids that doesn't produce dependence. Not to mention that there are publications by e.g. the US naval research laboratories detailing synthesis of opioid ligands...

Given that a lot of information about the New Zealand labs comes from places like the NZCOS, Immigrations & Customs Enforcement, Customs & Excise, Indian Military Intelligence Service, RCMP, INCB, Gendarmerie Nationale, Mup, GCSE, Bundesnachrichtendienst, FSB, Interpol, MI5, MI6, and the DEA and many others

somehow I doubt that the UK's domestic intelligence agency has anything to do with junkies in new zealand, likewise for 90% of those.

 

[Nicomorphinist]

Acetylmorphone and acetylated oxymorphone derivatives were invented in the first third of the XX. Century in German-speaking countries

 

[Hodor]

Acetylmorphone and acetylated oxymorphone derivatives were invented in the first third of the XX. Century in German-speaking countries

So what does that have to do with the Bundesnachrichtendienst spreading "silence and disinformation" on opioids to troll Kiwi druggies on the opposite end of the world?

There are thousands upon thousands of papers published on the synthesis of various opioids. Scientists working for big pharm companies were pouring pretty much any acid anhydride they could find on various natural and semi-synthetic opioids (including, as you are probably aware, nicotinic anhydride).

The reason you can't find a lot of info on the "home-bake" demethylation of codeine is simply that there is little reason for actual scientists to attempt a procedure with shitty yields if they have access to far better reagents and equipment, or they could just legally acquire the morphine in the first place. And you don't find a lot of info on it on the web either, because for the average druggie (even in NZ) it is probably cheaper and easier nowadays to get your hands on actual heroin than buying several boxes of OTC cold remedies (that contain only relatively tiny amounts of codeine to begin with), and attempt to convert them into morphine/heroin using a watched drug precursor.

Also, don't forget that the main alkaloid in the latex of papaver somniferum is morphine, not codeine. Most of the world's demand for codeine is fulfilled via the methylation of morphine to codeine, not the other way round.