Did the Sale of Pyrex Hurt the Crack-Cocaine Industry? | Hacker News Reader

Did the Sale of Pyrex Hurt the Crack-Cocaine Industry?

freakonomics.com

48 pointsbjonathan28 comments

They were "forced to switch from measuring cups purchased at Walmart to test tubes and beakers stolen from labs"? Really? This doesn't pass the sniff test.

Whenever I go into a Goodwill/Savers/Salvation Army store, I see shelves full of old Pyrex and other borosilicate glass cookware selling for $1 a piece. Moreover, it's not hard to buy lab equipment out of a catalog (or online). Considering the profit margins on crack, I have a hard time believing that buying beakers ($5-10 each, in bulk; less for student-grade) "had a substantial impact on crack production".

actually mid 1990s at Purdue U campus police would regularly investigate 'missing students and missing labware" for this very reason..

Buying out of places and catalogs means someone can track it back to you..people who do illegal stuff do not want it tracked back to them

Just have it delived to an empty house in the other end of town.

There's nothing suspicious in itself about ordering laboratory glassware, regardless of the type. If your lab is raided, the presence of glassware will be used to build a case against you for manufacturing, whether you bought or stole it.

Getting caught while stealing glassware from a lab is a much larger risk than having someone at a for-profit lab supply company play junior detective with your glassware order. This might not be entirely obvious while high on crack, though.

But let's say your lab is raided while you aren't there and the police are trying to tie you to the lab. You had better believe they'll be checking your credit card statements.

If your lab is raided, and they have no other means of tying you to its operation, and they can make the case to a judge that they should be able sequester your credit card history and the order details of scientific-sounding companies within it, then yes, you're in bad shape.

I think in most cases criminals are suitably stupid enough to make law enforcement's job much easier. Like, for example, busting someone who is trying to break into a lab with a security system, and then finding a meth lab in their mobile home.

There is something suspicious in itself about ordering laboratory glassware. When clandestine chemists buy, they use shell buyers, dodgy distributors, false letterhead, and/or squirrel purchases across many distributors.

Clandestine chemists would prefer not to send their glassware to 15 Methlab Lane, certainly. But most of the clever paranoid tactics are for the acquisition of chemicals, which the DEA has a very tight grip on. In some cases, precursors of precursors. A chemical supplier can pretty easily divine illegal applications from the order combination. Glassware suppliers cannot. And I'm a laboratory glassware seller, so I can say that with some certainty.

I believe its more a question about risk and availability. Anyone can buy Pyrex from Walmart, but finding lab equipment could be slightly harder for your average crack producer.

According to Pyrex, they made the switch to soda-lime glass in America over 60 years ago.

http://www.pyrexware.com/index.asp?pageId=30#TruthID6

and according to STATS.org:

"[...]the industry as a whole switched from borosilicate [...] in the 1980s for a variety of reasons, including the fact that soda lime was easier to melt and work with (fewer deformities in the glass). But one of the major reasons for moving to soda lime was environmental compliance: borosilicate glass produces far more emissions from a glass furnace, accounting, in part, for the presence of boric acid in the water and soil. And it was not economical for companies to install multi-million dollar filter systems."

http://stats.org/stories/2009/exploding_pyrex_oct14_09.html

Note that lab grade glassware has been and is currently still borosilicate glass. (and is sold as such to prevent confusion over what you are buying).

Not directly. The new purchaser of Pyrex reduced the quality of the product; That hurt anyone who desires temperature-resilient cookware, which includes my Mom.

No, she doesn't make crack cocaine.

See pessimizer's comment: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2500938

It definitely hurt the telescope optics market, there is no longer an affordable supplier of borosilicate optical blanks.

Consumer Reports:

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine-archive/2011/jan...

Does anyone know why the borosilicate cookware is no longer made? It was great stuff, while it was available.

The melting temp of borosilicate glass is higher. In glass production, most of the cost is the energy expenditure required to keep the kilns hot (they never turn off). By dropping to a lower melting point glass, they can shave a substantial amount off their energy bill.

Borosilicate is a lot more difficult to work with in general. Basically, they cut corners and downgraded goods available to consumers, as companies have done with many other products in the past 50 years.

It's made - just not by Pyrex. I bought some a month ago.

And what brand did you buy?

Arcuisine Elegance 2.8 quart rectangular pan. According to a review comment, a cheaper borosilicate alternative is Marinex.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrex#Composition

> According to glass supplier Pulles and Hannique, borosilicate Pyrex is made of Corning 7741 glass, and is equivalent in formulation to Schott Glass 8830 glass sold under the "Duran" brand name.

There is more information and a video in the original article: http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-03/gray-matter-ca...

i thought the low-end makers switched to using coffee pots and french presses. larger producers probably wanted that lab equipment anyway.

The sale of the Pyrex brand? No. The reformulation of the glass? Yes.

Hy guys, just so you know, I'm a chemistry lab glass expert and have spent years actually working with borosilicate lab glass as well as soda lime (no, not in a crack lab).

I've been well aware of the situation with Corning, Global Kitchen and Pyrex bakeware for years. Therefore, it's humorous I'm getting downvoted on this story in particular. Carry on.

You're not geting downvoted based on you, you're getting downvoted based on your comment, which comes off a little snippy.

Sure, I was just saying it's a source of irony or amusement or something for me. The downvoting hasn't wrinkled my snout.

It's a fairly short and snippy article though, isn't it? That's my succinct answer to the title. Poor crackheads.

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