Hacker News Reader

Comment by luu | Hacker News Reader

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".

View on HN

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.

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com