Tried clicking the fivethirtyeight link halfway down the article, and was immediately reminded of what abc decided to start doing today. What an asshole move.
I think the biggest takeaway for me is just how insanely ineffective banning pseudoephedrine over the counter was.
Price went down, usage went up overdose went up, seizures went up, the production just changed quickly and there wasn’t even a blip.
Billions of uses of bullshit decongestant products that didn’t work at all… and to get the good stuff you still need to buy it from behind the counter and give ID.
>He points out that “old” meth was made from ephedrine and that “new” meth is made from a chemical called Phenylacetone or P2P
the new is just the old that came back. The old meth, "biker meth", was P2P. Then was ephedrine, and with a crackdown on ephedrine - back to P2P.
Another noticeable thing - the recent shortage of ADHD medication while supposedly illegal meth production has been growing. Demand is present in both cases while the capitalism model of responding with supply seems to work very well only in one.
The ephedrine (or pseudoephedrine) synthesis is a one step using phosphorus/iodine reduction directly to methamphetamine. It’s simple and clean in that only an acid base extraction is required, and only one set of NP solvents.
All these others syntheses with multiple steps up the chances of weird toxic solvents or contaminants creeping in. I think it’s a contaminant issue that’s exacerbated by the drug use.
The government should just regulate it, control purity and production and let people access small amounts for recreation/performance. It’s not an evil drug per se - long history before it was criminalized. Plus that would neuter the cartels and protect people’s health more than pushing it underground.
Regular amphetamine (speed) is relatively okay as long as you’re not one of the people who’s wired to absolutely love it and develop a problem with it.
Meth on the other hand really is quite nasty, it’s directly neurotoxic to dopamine neurons in a way that regular speed isn’t
Do you have any memories that you cannot let go of? That play back in your head incessantly every single day without fail? That obsess nearly every waking moment? For addicts, that memory is the dopamine release of being high, and it definitely can happen after a single use. It doesn’t impress everyone in the same way, but for those who are vulnerable to it, it becomes nearly the only thought they can have until they scratch that itch. I used to think just like you, but after dealing with and truly understanding addiction in people close to me, I can never support legalization of certain super-addictive drugs. There is no one deserving of the torment that addicts are cursed with. We should try to ensure less people, not more, are ever introduced to it.
The article was doing so well until the conclusion.
> Does this rule out the idea of contaminants? No. Even if it’s 97% pure d-meth, there could be something very nasty lurking in that last 3%. But I don’t see the need for such an explanation. We know there are many more heavy users, so there’s no need to go beyond the idea that quantity has a quality all its own.
It's fine if the author finds it an uninteresting problem because the probable answer is staring us in the face, but still, he only has a plausible hypothesis.
If Sam Quinones is correct in that there is a fundamental difference in meth then and now that is causing major issues for addicts, it would certainly be in society's interest to figure that out and rectify it.
And I thought for a second they were talking about peer to peer meth but no that's what the DEA shut down by tightly controlling pseudoephedrine, where before meth using meth makers were making meth and distributing it.
It certainly seems like prohibition is just making things worse and making it more lucrative for the least ethical of black market producers.
Similar situation with fentanyl when compared to previous opiates.
Ha, funny. I thought it must be “p2p mesh” network architecture at first, then checked the comments and was like “oh p2p distributed meth?” Like you, hahaha
Ephedrine isn't banned, not even behind a prescription, there's just rather strict limits on how much you can buy a month. I take a Bronkaid every morning with my coffee.
the problems with the meth epidemic are 3 fold. two problems are intrinsic to meth and one is a matter of public policy.
1) meth is highly addictive and there is no pharmacological intervention for that addiction. there is no clinically effective therapeutic treatment for it either
2) meth is neurodegenerative. heavy users end up with a permanent disability
3) at some point around 2010 a bunch of cities decided it was totally cool if dealing and public use were normalized/decriminalized in areas their most vulnerable populations hang out.
(3) is an incredibly stupid and expensive policy given (1) and (2)
> Ephedrine meth was like a party drug. […] You could normally kind of more or less hang onto your life. You had a house, you had a job. […] P2P meth was nothing like that. It was a very sinister drug. It brought you inside. You didn’t want to be around other people. You wanted to just kind of be alone with whatever bizarre thoughts your mind was now cooking up, and conspiracies.
That sounds a lot like the progression of many stimulant addictions.
Was "Interstate 60" scenario every seriously considered for dealing with drug use problems? I think it could make both parties happy, drug users would disappear from cities and they would have unlimited amount of drugs in their utopia.
Happy to see that meth is becoming more affortable, maybe inflation isn't so bad after all if we consider all the things we have access to and that have come down in price since few decades ago. /s
Honestly, that was sort of the impression I got. It's not that the meth is contaminated, it's that the meth is way stronger and more pure. I wouldn't be surprised if incredibly high doses of any stimulant causes schizophrenia.
d-meth being the desirable one (leaving l-meth undesirable) matches up with my anecdotal experience with adderall, which is approximately equal parts d-amphetamine and l-amphetamine -- it's not quite methamphetamine, but it's closely related.
I was given some by prescription for ADHD, and when I first tried it, it completely destroyed me for some reason -- I could not seem to get myself out of bed to eat (or do much of anything), even when I was very hungry. I ended up having to sleep it off, because being awake for that was very distressing -- not only did it not help me, but it seemed it had caused me even greater executive dysfunction.
When I brought this up at my next appointment, I was prescribed pure d-amph to try next. This actually helped me a lot, and continues to help me to this day.
I can only guess that the l-amph was the problem with the adderall that day. While my body seems to also have issues with different brands of d-amph, they're more like heart issues rather than executive function issues.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 53.1 ms ] threadI think the biggest takeaway for me is just how insanely ineffective banning pseudoephedrine over the counter was.
Price went down, usage went up overdose went up, seizures went up, the production just changed quickly and there wasn’t even a blip.
Billions of uses of bullshit decongestant products that didn’t work at all… and to get the good stuff you still need to buy it from behind the counter and give ID.
the new is just the old that came back. The old meth, "biker meth", was P2P. Then was ephedrine, and with a crackdown on ephedrine - back to P2P.
Another noticeable thing - the recent shortage of ADHD medication while supposedly illegal meth production has been growing. Demand is present in both cases while the capitalism model of responding with supply seems to work very well only in one.
All these others syntheses with multiple steps up the chances of weird toxic solvents or contaminants creeping in. I think it’s a contaminant issue that’s exacerbated by the drug use.
The government should just regulate it, control purity and production and let people access small amounts for recreation/performance. It’s not an evil drug per se - long history before it was criminalized. Plus that would neuter the cartels and protect people’s health more than pushing it underground.
Meth on the other hand really is quite nasty, it’s directly neurotoxic to dopamine neurons in a way that regular speed isn’t
3 lines later..
>.. The Drug Enforcement Agency tests the meth they seize to see how it was made.
quick answer!
Now I can't say that I led a P2P network anymore.
> Does this rule out the idea of contaminants? No. Even if it’s 97% pure d-meth, there could be something very nasty lurking in that last 3%. But I don’t see the need for such an explanation. We know there are many more heavy users, so there’s no need to go beyond the idea that quantity has a quality all its own.
It's fine if the author finds it an uninteresting problem because the probable answer is staring us in the face, but still, he only has a plausible hypothesis.
If Sam Quinones is correct in that there is a fundamental difference in meth then and now that is causing major issues for addicts, it would certainly be in society's interest to figure that out and rectify it.
It certainly seems like prohibition is just making things worse and making it more lucrative for the least ethical of black market producers.
Similar situation with fentanyl when compared to previous opiates.
The main thing about Phenylacetone meth is that there's so much of it - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29027284 - Oct 2021 (359 comments)
1) meth is highly addictive and there is no pharmacological intervention for that addiction. there is no clinically effective therapeutic treatment for it either
2) meth is neurodegenerative. heavy users end up with a permanent disability
3) at some point around 2010 a bunch of cities decided it was totally cool if dealing and public use were normalized/decriminalized in areas their most vulnerable populations hang out.
(3) is an incredibly stupid and expensive policy given (1) and (2)
Precisely.
I was given some by prescription for ADHD, and when I first tried it, it completely destroyed me for some reason -- I could not seem to get myself out of bed to eat (or do much of anything), even when I was very hungry. I ended up having to sleep it off, because being awake for that was very distressing -- not only did it not help me, but it seemed it had caused me even greater executive dysfunction.
When I brought this up at my next appointment, I was prescribed pure d-amph to try next. This actually helped me a lot, and continues to help me to this day.
I can only guess that the l-amph was the problem with the adderall that day. While my body seems to also have issues with different brands of d-amph, they're more like heart issues rather than executive function issues.