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Comment by anamexis | Hacker News Reader

That is a US federal law (the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act of 2005)

And now we've got a fentanyl epidemic filling the void and even more power handed to Mexican cartels since meth got harder to produce domestically. Drugs continue to win the war on drugs.

You can't fight a war against inanimate objects. You can fight a war against drug addicts. You cannot possibly win a war against drug addicts without addressing the fundamental problem.

Most of us cannot make these drugs ourselves. To restrict them effectively would certainly curtail their abuse?

The presumption here is that an addict, unable to get their "favorite" drug, will now just stop doing drugs entirely. This is not the case.

Drugs can also be stolen, from homes, and from pharmacies, and from ambulances.

There are way more vectors than people care to ponder. If you've ever had an addict in your life, you're forced to.

In other news, the bureau of labor reports that the number of unemployed chemists have skyrocketed, and lab equipment manufacturers are reporting a surprise bump in sales.

If the mountain will not go to...

Shake-n-bake meth was relatively easy to do for the average methhead.

Also, do not underestimate the capabilities of a meth user when they get fixated on something.

Bonus - meth causes among other things incredible focus.

I’ve noticed the comments on hn become more meth curious over the last couple of years… I know the state of CO has been pressuring doctors not to prescribe aderall. Mine got taken away because i only took it when i needed to force myself to really work (a few times a month). Now i use pseudoephedrine.

Doctors handed out oxy like candy and when people couldn’t get scripts they turned to H on the street

Teachers push any kid that can’t sit still while being bored for hours to be taken to the doctor for adhd, where they are quickly prescribed amphetamine salts. What do you think they will hit the streets for if their addy script ever gets cut off, or, there’s a shortage of supply? (happened recently). Methamphetamine.

Many people use small doses of meth the same way they would take a daily dose of adderall.

You can actually be prescribed literally methamphetamine. Not amphetamine, methamphetamine. It’s rare, but it exists.

Hard drugs have been illegal in America for generations, and yet every city has had a junkie community all this time. How much more failure must we entertain?

Vice or someone reports that you can make the new formulation, in a backpack, in a Walmart bathroom, with supplies you haven't even bought yet. Given that, and, well, the Internet, I'm sure making it isn't hard for an addict to learn how to make these drugs, even though it's not common knowledge and you and I can't do it.

"We just need to wage the war on drugs harder, then it will surely work."

It turns out it's not possible to do that. We've been trying since the 1960's.

Longer than that if you count one of the OG drugs - Alcohol

The "fundamental problem" is the breakdown of community (drug abuse being primarily being a function of the existence or lack of interpersonal involvement and responsibilities that would preclude spending time and money on them). People who are comfortable huddling in their cars, homes, and exclusive social clubs, and who would rather spend money on cops rather than social programs, aren't going to like the fix for that.

Do you have a source for this?

> drug abuse being primarily being a function of the existence or lack of interpersonal involvement and responsibilities that would preclude spending time and money on them

AFAIK there have always been addicts in every culture. Alcohol, various drugs, and strongly self destructive behaviors are not recent additions to the human experience. But I don't know any if the numbers or the research on this root cause you mention.

I suspect they're referring to experiments like the famous "Rat Park". There is clearly a strong social and environmental component to addiction susceptibility, at least in rats.

I don't know if I'd go as far as to say it's the fundamental problem, but definitely a major factor.

"AFAIK there have always been addicts in every culture."

Surely you would agree that there the proportion of addicts varies by culture and society, that the US for example has a much higher proportion than many poorer nations? I don't know about the first comment's claim that lack of interpersonal relationship is the root cause, but a strong social component looks obvious to me.

Cite? Every nation has an underbelly.

Poorer nations, those folks tend to die pretty fast though.

There was this article about Iceland combatting teen drug abuse by providing alternative activities and social outlets:

https://www.naturalhigh.org/icelands-radical-transformation-...

Iceland isn’t really a poor country though, even if it doesn’t have a high GDP. It’s more like New Zealand.

cite for what? my comment is basically asking for a citation for the OP's (and your) claim that substance abuse isn't culturally dependent?

I didn't claim that it wasn't culturally-dependent. Both people turning to drugs to self-medicate, and people not supporting and funding effective interventions - people on both sides rejecting or not seeing the opportunity to engage in community-building - is absolutely a culture issue.

No, it's merely a personal observation. In that vein, I'd think it more correct to say that there are always addicts on the margin of every culture.

Not the OP, but bring back real jobs and real way of spending your time (like real family and friends) and much of the meth problem will get solved by itself.

> AFAIK there have always been addicts in every culture

Alcohol addicts are a totally different thing compared to drug addicts. You can die as a result of alcohol, but there's nothing like fentanyl in the alcohol world (I'm talking about the scale of the disaster, I know about the few alcohol intoxications here and there).

There is in countries where alcohol is illegal, like in the Middle East. There, wet have similar problems as we have in the western world with poisoned supply - people buying liquor, but it turns out to be bleach. So I'd say bleach in your liquor is the fentanyl of the alcohol world. We don't see that in countries where alcohol is legal though, hmm.

> social programs

Do you have any links to social programs that have successfully dealt with meth addiction?

Can't say I have seen any locally (New Zealand) and we are a country more likely to see such programs?

I don't, but I'll ask you to consider the following:

1) The implication of my statement wasn't that social programs would solve the problem single-handedly, but that they're more effective than enhanced law enforcement spending.

2) This would seem to be, at the very least, supported by the people who advocated for treating the (mostly white and middle-class) victims of the opioid epidemic in the US as suffering from a medical rather than criminal affliction.

> I don't, but I'll ask you to consider the following: 1) The implication of my statement wasn't that social programs would solve the problem single-handedly, but that they're more effective than enhanced law enforcement spending.

What do police have to do with the effectiveness of social programs? A fundamentally ineffective social program will be just about as ineffective no matter how much funding it gets - because the problem they are approaching isn't one that they can solve.

>A fundamentally ineffective social program will be just about as ineffective no matter how much funding it gets - because the problem they are approaching isn't one that they can solve.

Correct - ironically, as you're describing most law enforcement agencies. The money spent on police - particularly their generous overtime and pension pay, equipment outlays, and hilariously ineffectual training - could be used to fund social interventions that actually work.

Until the past few years, I held a similar view. I.e., if we could just dry up the demand for the product, the rest of the system would crumble.

Then the whole Sackler / Oxycontin thing came to light. And I saw (well, second hand) a normal person get hooked on pain meds after back surgery, thanks to those assholes. And they're not in prison.

That's when I concluded that we lack the collective will to take the necessary steps to fully stop the trade of addictive drugs.

The problem with decriminalization/legalization is that those are the most abused drugs.

However, our drug war is causing Mexico to descend in to anarchy and people are dying by the thousands, or living in total fear of cartels that we trained in the School of the Americas.

Thus, I conclude we have to decriminalize and treat our addicts. Enforcement is not working. If we had a sane drug policy 30-40 years ago, Mexico might be a healthy vibrant trading partner.

Meth is not harder to produce. It's now mass-produced from P2P, with chiral purification using various methods (like pulling one enantiomer with tartaric acid).

Yes. But now it's produced in para-industrial labs, mostly in other countries, rather than in apartments and back yards, where those ad hoc labs were actually real public safety problems.

Isn't increased financing of major drug cartels a serious public safety problem?

Weren't most pseudoephedrine-to-meth operations in rural areas or otherwise situated away from the general public to avoid detection?

Was Al Capone a public menace, or a businessman saving countless thousands from methanol poisoning and distilling accidents?

Plenty of these stories documented either way: https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/pittsburgh/news/police-erie-boy-...

Por que no los dos?

But any "benefit" of the likes of Al Capone ended with prohibition, i.e. the thing forcing the alternatives to be methanol poisoning or mob hits.

And you wouldn't need to check ID to rate limit cold medicine if you would just check ID to rate limit what people make out of it.

I wonder if the users are sad to miss out on the artisanal small-batch experience.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/03/montana-steve-da...

Adding chili powder was his trademark.

> mostly in other countries

Another case of needless regulation driving outsourcing, and putting our small manufacturing business out of work.

I'm curious about the chemistry here (though I have very little chemistry background), so, bearing in mind that I have zero interest in producing methamphetamine, perhaps you can elaborate a little:

– I can't see how Phenylacetone can have chirality

– I don't understand how any enantiomer of P2P (if one exists, see above) can be selected for specifically via a chemical reaction, especially here with tartaric acid, which is a chiral molecule itself, so surely you would need a specific enantiomer of tartaric acid to start with?

I'm sure these are basic questions, I'm just a dabbler. Any links welcome, no problem if this is out of place for HN.TIA

P2P doesn't have chirality, but methamphetamine does. Any carbon atom with 4 different groups attached to it will always be chiral, in meth it's the carbon next to the nitrogen. It has: methyl group, phenol group, hydrogen, and the amino group.

> – I don't understand how any enantiomer of P2P (if one exists, see above) can be selected for specifically via a chemical reaction

You just react P2P and get a racemic mix of L- and D- enantiomers of meth. Then you react it with tartaric acid, which will preferentially react with the "right" meth.

> tartaric acid, which is a chiral molecule itself

Ah, I see the confusion. Tartaric acid derived from biological sources consists of just one enantiomer, that's why you can use it to do chiral resolution.

Thanks, very informative!

I would like to see “taxes” be the winner of the war on drugs

It's worse than that, because it's not actually a void that's being filled - meth production simply switched to a different pathway that's even more effective and potent. There's actually more meth than there was before the ban.

https://dynomight.net/p2p-meth/ "The main thing about P2P meth is that there's so much of it"

Really, I'd read somewhere (might have been browsing the subreddit out of curiosity a while ago) that the meth was much worse now that they had to switch to a process that results in more chiral junk. Interesting.

It was, briefly, and then they figured out how to purify it I guess?

Drugs winning the “war on drugs” would be a problem for the “war on drugs” only if reducing drug use had actually been a priority of the “war on drugs” at any time in its half century of existence.

The majority of fentanyl is produced by a handful of labs in China. If the USA were serious about stopping the fentanyl overdose problem, it could be done with political pressure.

Ask yourself why that isn't happening?

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