Sciencemadness Discussion Board - can Meth be made without pseudoephedrine?

can Meth be made without pseudoephedrine?

Twospoons - 8-10-2009 at 16:58

I'm just curious to know 'yes' or 'no'. I DON"T want to know how, or any links to methods etc.
Reason: govt in NZ is banning pseudoephedrine to stop the meth cooks, and I'm wondering if this is completely futile.

ammonium isocyanate - 8-10-2009 at 17:04

Yes. I can think of at least half a dozen other ways to go about it, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. Psuedoephedrine reduction is just the the easiest way for the average joe to make meth.

Twospoons - 8-10-2009 at 17:20

I thought as much. Typical govt kneejerk reaction will simply move the problem elsewhere, while making life hell for Joe Public.

Sedit - 8-10-2009 at 17:28

Psuedoephedrine is a relativly "new invention" in the manufacturing of amphetamines and yes there efforts are almost futile, but they have stated in microgram papers that they know its futile and there goal is to inhibit production by making it uneconomic as possible to synthesis. This means that even if a "new" synthesis finds its way into main stream they will just go down the list and ban everything or atlest the main parts so that they must extract small amounts here and there raising there cost and time to something that is not a problem for the DEA. The general public is not disillusioned enough with the DEA for this to end anytime soon so its something any chemist will have to get use to.

PS: Not to pry Twospoons but isn't this something that could have been found out with ease elseware without ever asking here?

[Edited on 9-10-2009 by Sedit]

entropy51 - 8-10-2009 at 17:36

Quote:

can Meth be made without pseudoephedrine?

Of course. From phenylacetone. But that was made a scheduled controlled substance about 25 years ago.

Of course. From benzaldehyde. But that is listed and watched.

They will go down the list all the way to the bottom. Time and money are no object. Resistance is futile.

Twospoons - 8-10-2009 at 17:37

@ Sedit: I don't know enough about the chemistry involved (i know nothing , in fact, and intend to keep it that way) to ask the right questions of the search engines. There are so many knowledgeable people on this forum I was sure I would get a straight and simple answer here - apologies if I have caused offence to anyone.

Ironically, leaving the pseudo available over the counter I would have thought would actually make it easier to track down the cooks.

[Edited on 9-10-2009 by Twospoons]

entropy51 - 8-10-2009 at 18:00

Quote: Originally posted by Twospoons

Ironically, leaving the pseudo available over the counter I would have thought would actually make it easier to track down the cooks.

You certainly didn't offend me. I'm sorry if I made you think that. Its a legitimate question.

In the US, they couldn't track the cooks because the stuff was being stolen off store shelves by the trashbag full.

As far as I know, pseudo is still available here, but not on the open shelves. I think you have to go to the pharmacy and show ID and sign for it; that way they can try to track it.

From what I read, the restriction on sales has cut down drastically on the mom & pop labs; they probably aren't sophisticated enough to make the alternative precursors.

Twospoons - 8-10-2009 at 18:12

Here its changing from "ID and sign" to "prescription only", meaning doctors' waiting rooms full of people with sniffles. The biggest source for the cooks here is pure pseudo thats smuggled in, not over-the-counter cold remedies, so the changes were always going to be rather ineffectual.

Sedit - 8-10-2009 at 19:19

"the restriction on sales has cut down drastically on the mom & pop labs"

Funny thing is they feel this is a good thing... where as the mexican cartels have like 3 or 4 people in the forbes billionare list since then..

Sorry but I feel the war on drugs is counter productive by all means and sending money to the evil in the world instead of the small time cooks, philosphers, weirdos and hippys who will just put it back into the economy anyway. The money gets spent and supply has raised, Thats a fact. Who that money goes to is all that has changed.

entropy51 - 9-10-2009 at 03:59

Quote:

...the mexican cartels have like 3 or 4 people in the forbes billionare...

I just read that the Mexican government had seized something like 30 tons IIRC of precursors. So the scale of that problem is indeed huge.

mr.crow - 9-10-2009 at 09:32

The small scale addict operated labs are the most dangerous for the community, law enforcement and the chemistry hobby. Smurfing is also done on a huge scale for so called super labs http://www.usdoj.gov/ndic/pubs36/36407/index.htm they have a 5 gallon bucket of pills

I think they should ban single ingredient pseudoephedrine and just sell it in combination with other drugs to treat colds. Cooks aren't going to bother separating 500mg of acetaminophen from 60mg of pseudo because of the losses.

JohnWW - 9-10-2009 at 13:44

Yes, I heard that utterly STUPID and dictatorial announcement by the right-wing New Zealand Prime Minister, John Key, in the local news media yesterday, about making decongestant pills containing pseudoephedrine available only on pre$cription at a greatly increased co$t to chronic allergic rhinitis sufferers like myself, with a view to banning them entirely. I find that the over-the-counter pharmaceutical alternatives to it, such as phenylephrine and paracetamol (acetaminophen), are practically useless. I intend emailing all New Zealand Members Of Parliament, asking them to oppose Key's madness.

Key was just "grandstanding", in a bid to (so he thinks) win cheap votes by playing the "law 'n' order" card, which is hard for political opponents to buck because of the "peer pressure" that is brought upon New Zealand Members of Parliament to appear to be "tough on crime", and (despite recent courtroom disclosures of rampant corruption in their ranks such as the Bain and Haig and Dougherty cases) pro-Pig. If he really thinks that he is going to fool people by this means, making essential medications hard to come by in the process, and by such related things as promising more and more (thoroughly corrupt) NZ Pigs and harsher and harsher jail sentences, he is deluding himself. Key's jackbooted and ham-fisted NZ National (Nazi) Party got into power by fraud and deceit, and it will be booted out in the next election in 2011, if not before.

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoephedrine (which is also known as (+)-pseudoephedrine and D-pseudoephedrine or (1S,2S)-2-methylamino-1-phenylpropan-1-ol), its optical isomer, L-Pseudoephedrine, also known as (-)-(1R,2R)-pseudoephedrine or (-)-pseudoephedrine, has less unwanted side-effects, cannot be used to synthesize D-methamphetamine, yet it has the same decongestant effect; but Pfizer-Warner-Lambert, which holds the patent for it, has not (yet) sought approval to sell it to the public as a legal medicine in any country. However, this will be taken out of their hands in less than 20 years, when their patent expires.

And what about ephedrine (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephedrine ) , of which pseudoephedrine is a diastereomer, but which did not seem to have been mentioned in the above news item along with pseudoephedrine? However, it was mentioned in the internet release http://www.medsafe.govt.nz/regulatory/Guideline/ephedrineAnd... . The enantiomer which is marketed is (-)-(1R,2S)-ephedrine. It has the same medical use, although possibly not quite as effective, but can also be used for making D-methamphetamine ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methamphetamine ), the enantiomer used by drug addicts.

Another reason why making pseudoephedrine prescription-only or banning it will be futile is that most of the stuff used locally by drug cooks (mostly working for gangs) to make methamphetamine does not come from ordinary "cold and 'flu" tablets, but is (at least 70%) imported, often in bulk in pure powder form, by smugglers, mostly from China where (along with ephedrine) it is manufactured on a very large scale and is perfectly legal to possess. The stuff can be easily disguised or concealed, and drug-sniffing dogs used by NZ Customs seem to be unable to detect it. Besides, there are other substituted amphetamine derivatives besides methamphetamine which can be used by addicts to obtain "highs", and these may be synthesizable by different methods.

It looks as if I will have to look at making my own pseudoephedrine and ephedrine, to treat my rhinitis. As yet, their possession and manufacture does not seem to be illegal in New Zealand, except possibly that possession of large (non-prescription) quantities of them may become contrary to the Medicines Act (as distinct from the [Alleged] Misuse of Drugs Act 1975, passed in that year due to a gullible Labor Govt being deceived by the NZ Pigs), if they became prescription-only. Can anyone think of efficient and cost-effective methods of making them?

Ephedrine occurs naturally in Ephedra species plants, which are used in Chinese herbal medicine, but they are somewhat difficult to grow. In China, firms producing it for export extract US$13 million worth of ephedrine from 30,000 tons of ephedra annually, 10 times the amount that is used in traditional Chinese medicine, - which suggests that the stuff is cheaper to grow instead of synthesize. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephedra , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephedraceae , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephedra_sinica , and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephedra_distachya .

201px-Efedryna-Ephedrine-Structure((1R,2S)-2-(methylamino)-1-phenylpropan-1-ol).png - 3kB

175px-D-Pseudoephedrine-Structure((1S,2S)-2-Methylamino-1-Phenylpropan-1-ol).PNG - 4kB

[Edited on 10-10-09 by JohnWW]

entropy51 - 9-10-2009 at 14:26

Quote:

....pseudoephedrine available only on pre$cription at a greatly increased co$t to chronic allergic rhinitis sufferers like myself, with a view to banning them entirely. I find that the over-the-counter pharmaceutical alternatives to it, such as phenylephrine and paracetamol, are practically useless

OTC non-sedating antihistamines such as Claritin work much better, JohnWW.

Cheap meth makes industrial waste

watson.fawkes - 9-10-2009 at 18:43

There's a solid reason to disallow cheap meth production that has nothing to do with a larger policy of drug prohibition, and that's the issue of industrial waste. Incompetent cooks don't clean up after themselves, as a rule, have poor yields, and leave behind a cocktail of toxicity that's astonishingly expensive to clean up. I have a friend in town who's done this work. He told me about a property that was just a complete disaster. I'm sure I'm going to get details wrong, but here's the jist. The original owner had a tenant that operated a cook house. That owner abandoned the mortgage. The bank made a cursory cleanup, before they knew the extent of the damage, put up a second layer of drywall over all the existing surfaces. The bank sold it to a public housing agency that was operating as rent-subsidized unit. A few months in, they had a vacant unit with toxicity level too high for habitation. My friend was in there taking out two layers of drywall, in the summer, in a hazmat suit. I think they even replaced the subfloor. I don't know how the liability ended up falling, but it doesn't matter for the purpose of this story. What matters is that there was a dead economic loss of something in the low six figures (USD), barely better than scraping the house off the lot and rebuilding.

This cost is an externalized cost of cheap meth production. The perpetrators of the property damage don't have assets to recover, so it's impossible to hold them economically responsible. Therefore, while this was not the original motivation for criminalizing small-scale synthesis, it has become a reason for continuing it. If you're interested in changing the policy about synthesis, this is a fact that has to be dealt with, and by some method other than "let it happen". From a purely political point of view, there's a class of people that don't want such property damage to happen, even if they don't care about the drug issue as such.

This is a real problem for figuring out what to do. Going after small-scale manufacturers has only resulted in concentrations in large-scale ones, which have all the problems of militarization and corrupting governments. Surely, since it seems inevitable that the supply will always be there, it's better to have small-scale manufacturers than large ones. The problem is how you enable this without, at the same time, promoting an increase in this kind of property damage. What seems certain is that the answer is going to involve some kind of license, some kind of monitoring, and some kind of zoning or facilities inspection.

My advice to the people here that want to change this policy is to come up with some solid policy ideas about how to license, monitor, and inspect in a manner that's least intrusive.

The problem, as I see it, needs to deal with external interests to a property. The three most common such interests are neighbors, mortgage holders, and insurers. Each has a legitimate concern about toxicity. Dealing with these interests holds the key to figuring out what to do.

497 - 9-10-2009 at 18:52

Trying not to be too OT here, but I'm curious what exactly the property was contaminated with? Like solvents or what?

Magpie - 9-10-2009 at 19:37

I have always argued (tongue-in-cheek) that these meth cooks could really benefit from some classes in organic chemistry.

Quote:

Trying not to be too OT here, but I'm curious what exactly the property was contaminated with? Like solvents or what?

This is something I've always wondered about also. The cleanup crews go in in moon suits and spend thousands of taxpayer dollar$ cleaning up a meth lab. How is their contamination so different than what you and I would leave if we didn't clean up properly?

497 - 9-10-2009 at 21:13

Quote:

How is their contamination so different than what you and I would leave if we didn't clean up properly?

I doubt it is, in most cases.. Besides maybe being in larger quantity. But it seems they have to take everything extremely carefully, no matter how inconsequential it may be in reality. They don't actually know what's there, so I'm sure they assume the worst. And when they do, they're probably looking at MSDS's after all (shudder...) And why shouldn't they take every possible (extremely expensive) precaution when they have been given a blank check to clean it up?..

psychokinetic - 9-10-2009 at 21:53

Quote: Originally posted by Twospoons

Here its changing from "ID and sign" to "prescription only", meaning doctors' waiting rooms full of people with sniffles. The biggest source for the cooks here is pure pseudo thats smuggled in, not over-the-counter cold remedies, so the changes were always going to be rather ineffectual.

That's exactly what I would have said if you hadn't already.

zed - 10-10-2009 at 02:31

Lots of ways to make Methamphetamine. It would be quite difficult to prevent a skilled and motivated Chemist from making it. Most, simply choose not to do so.

Currently, Mexican Organized Crime is reputed to produce most of the Meth, that is distributed in the US. These boys buy ephedrine and pseudoephedrine by the ton in Asia and India, and they then have it shipped into Mexico......Where they control some of the local governments.

Unfortunately, during the last generation or so, several very simple methods have been developed for converting ephedrines to methamphetamine. The methods are not hard to utilize, and common criminals with a little training, can pull off the transformation.

Bingo! Suddenly, after generations of relatively low supply, Meth is once again abundantly available.

Great high. Lots of fun. Exhilarating. Kills you, or completely screws you up, if you use too much of it. And, generally speaking, folks that like it, and have easy access to it.....Always use too much of it.

Nasty business. The old scourge has returned.

1281371269 - 10-10-2009 at 05:59

Beyond the economic problems, surely there's an argument that the government should do everything in its power to eradicate Meth production on moral grounds?

entropy51 - 10-10-2009 at 06:18

Quote: Originally posted by Magpie

They essentially consider any detectable traces of product on surfaces as a deadly poison, and there are usually tests for Pb or Hg if one of those processes had been used.

One state's cleanup standard is here

watson.fawkes - 10-10-2009 at 06:25

Quote: Originally posted by 497

Trying not to be too OT here, but I'm curious what exactly the property was contaminated with? Like solvents or what?

Unfortunately, I don't know. My friend was just doing cleanup, which means, in this case, interior demolition. I don't think they told him exactly.

I do have the impression, though, that the solvents aren't the problematic contaminants. If I were pressed to guess, I'd say that there were some organo-phosphorus byproducts that were the real problem. Whatever it is, it seems to form hot, go into vapor, exit the reaction vessel, and absorb into the room surfaces. This model should give a ballpark figure for molecular weights.

watson.fawkes - 10-10-2009 at 06:33

Quote: Originally posted by Mossydie

Beyond the economic problems, surely there's an argument that the government should do everything in its power to eradicate Meth production on moral grounds?

There are other arguments, founded on the morality of avoiding tyranny, that the government should do nothing based on grounds of liberty and freedom. In other word, morality does not yield a unique political perspective.

The trade-offs between these two poles are the veritable substance of political debate, which would, indeed be out of bounds for this forum. I won't argue either side here.

Contamination is not a phantasm

watson.fawkes - 10-10-2009 at 06:52

Several people have brought up the over-zealousness of clean-up as a way of diminishing the problem of contamination. Instruments, however, are not the initial detectors of contamination. Humans are. The typical pattern is that a cook operation moves out, the landlord doesn't know (or turns a blind eye) and rents out the property to an ignorant tenant. The tenant gets ill within months. (The much less typical pattern is that a cook house gets busted.) At this point the landlord has initial liability to the tenants, and it's this liability which is the origin of the economic losses. Now "ill within months" is a huge level of contamination, far above any kind of permissible exposure level in an industrial context.

Where contamination levels do come into play is the amount of effort that goes into clean up. In the typical case, these figures do not enter into the decision about whether to clean up or not. So the economic measure of over-zealous standards is the difference between two clean up projects. This difference is modest. Once you need to clean up, cleaning up a little more extensively is not a lot of money on top of what you'd have to do anyway.

entropy51 - 10-10-2009 at 07:45

Link to NY Times article about a contaminated home

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/14/us/14meth.html?_r=1

JohnWW - 10-10-2009 at 08:04

Quote: Originally posted by Mossydie

Beyond the economic problems, surely there's an argument that the government should do everything in its power to eradicate Meth production on moral grounds?

No! Ever since the Prohibition era of alcohol of the 1920s, which merely served to enrich a few smugglers, bootleggers, moonshiners, slygroggers, and the proprietors of "speakeasys" (illegal pubs), it has been clear that banning various drug substances merely creates blackmarkets for them. This, due to the public perception of shortages of the substances, and resulting steep price rises for them, can be exploited by the criminal element in supplying them, which began with the millionaire gangsters of the 1920s, such as Al Capone, Legs Diamond (Jack Moran), Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson, Dutch Schultz, Bugs Moran, and the rest. It culminated in the infamous Valentine's Day Massacre of Bugs Moran's gang by Al Capone's, on 14th Feb. 1929 in Chicago, Il.

Serious drug addiction and consequent criminal involvement was never a problem when for centuries, until about the 1930s, one could go down to the local drugstore, and buy any amount of heroin, morphine, cocaine, marijuana, hashish, barbiturates, and amphetamines, over-the-counter with no questions or prescriptions, often in attractive richly-decorated packaging. Heroin was widely advertized by manufacturing chemists as being "the perfect guardian of health", and a cure-all.

If drugs were legal, their prices would be so low that it would not be worthwhile for criminals to get involved in blackmarketing them, blackmarket (non-pharmacy) supplies of them would be minimal, and any addicts (who would be much fewer) would be more willing to come forward for treatment. Because drugs would then be much less in the news media, there would be much fewer people trying them out as novelties. Many people have the philosophy that, if something is made illegal by the government, it must be good for you, and so try illegal drugs either out of curiosity or as an act of defiance of the $tate.

[Edited on 10-10-09 by JohnWW]

Magpie - 10-10-2009 at 08:05

Thank you watson and entropy. I certainly have been educated. I can understand that there would be significant organo-phosphorus contamination. This is the basis for many insecticides.

Actually, this is one of the reasons I don't like to use motels much anymore.

S.C. Wack - 10-10-2009 at 08:53

The links are typical, methamphetamine base itself being what is targeted. Since we are in an age where we can detect very very very low levels of things like meth, getting to a level like below 10 micrograms per square meter is rather challenging.

However, this meth residue has less to do with the manufacture of meth than from the smoking of it by the operators. It's convenient to say it's from the evil meth cooks and their sinister chemistry.

watson.fawkes - 10-10-2009 at 09:10

Quote: Originally posted by entropy51

Link to NY Times article about a contaminated home

Thanks for that. Here's an excerpt germane to the question of politics of changing drug laws:

Quote:

About 20 states have passed laws requiring meth contamination cleanup, and they use widely varied standards. Virtually all the laws hold the property owner financially responsible; Colorado appears to be the only state that allots federal grant money to help innocent property owners faced with unexpected cleanup jobs.

In other states, like Georgia, landlords and other real estate owners have fought a proposed cleanup law.

Property owners have a class interest in reducing the amount of money they have to pay for cleaning up. They can try to foist off costs on someone else; this is the Georgia example. Beyond the immediate scope of the article, though, consider how that same class of property owners would respond to a proposed law decriminalizing meth production. Such a law would cost them money and they'll oppose it.

Generalizing further, there's no _a priori_ reason why there won't be "home chemistry research lab clean up" somewhere in the future. Perfectly legal research, when performed sloppily, can generate just as much toxicity, perhaps more.

Here's another excerpt from that article:

Quote:

To Ms. Holt’s horror, inspectors found high concentrations of meth on her kitchen countertops, where she sterilized bottles, prepared baby food and doled out snacks.

The assays for contaminants focus on the illegal substances themselves, since that's the evidence in court that law enforcement is interested in. So there's an observation bias in favor of specific contraband substances and against all other byproducts of synthesis. So whenever I read "meth was found", I have to wonder exactly what else is actually there. The various symptoms I've read about don't seem to me to be caused solely by methamphetamine as such (although it's certainly possible they are).

entropy51 - 10-10-2009 at 09:27

Quote:

The various symptoms I've read about don't seem to me to be caused solely by methamphetamine as such (although it's certainly possible they are).

Probably not by pure product, but the illicit stuff is never pure.

Quote:

Generalizing further, there's no _a priori_ reason why there won't be "home chemistry research lab clean up" somewhere in the future. Perfectly legal research, when performed sloppily, can generate just as much toxicity, perhaps more.

There already is! Recall the threads here about the hapless Mr. Deeb in Massachusetts. I think the real risk to many of us (but not all - you know who you are) is not being brought up on drug charges, but rather being charged 200 K US$ for "environmental cleanup" of our labs.

If you read the court transcripts in drug lab cases, you see that the court recognizes narc squad officers as "experts" and they give testimony to the effect that the whole place is contaminated with "biohazards" because there was a bottle of HCl under the sink. I posted a link to one of these transcripts back in June. Interesting and scary reading.

watson.fawkes - 10-10-2009 at 10:07

Quote: Originally posted by entropy51

There already is! Recall the threads here about the hapless Mr. Deeb in Massachusetts.

Granted, but what I was really talking about was actual contamination by a non-property owner, neither satisfied in the Deeb case, whose "clean up" is a jurisdiction covering its own ass.

Sandmeyer - 10-10-2009 at 10:56

It is quite obvious that certain groups profit enormously from keeping you constantly brainwashed and frightened with the demons that are everywhere and ought to destroy you. Illegal (i.e certain) drugs are one of those demons (but of course when Pfizer sells those same compounds they are angels). Others such demons are indians, blacks, russians, homosexuals, nicaraguans, communists, list can be very long. It is an old and very effective trick used by few to control many, and also to relocate the public resources into a few private pockets. More demons = less freedom. Enjoy.

[Edited on 10-10-2009 by Sandmeyer]

1281371269 - 10-10-2009 at 13:20

Quote: Originally posted by JohnWW

Yes, but regardless of the effects of making substances illegal or attempting to stop their production, (which I agree often prevent a good case for legalization) assuming one thinks that the substance will have only a negative on users and society then one would be morally obligated to do everything possible to try to get rid of it. An analogy could run along the lines that if you know someone is out to kill someone else and you have an opportunity to take away their gun then you would probably do so, even if this potentially leads to them suffering a far more violent death at the hands of a crude implement.

But this is a chemistry forum - Molarity, not Morality, I apologise for raising the topic.

hissingnoise - 11-10-2009 at 04:10

Quote: Originally posted by Mossydie

An analogy could run along the lines that if you know someone is out to kill someone else and you have an opportunity to take away their gun then you would probably do so, even if this potentially leads to them suffering a far more violent death at the hands of a crude implement.

That's quite a good analogy, Mossydie; it seems to sum up anti-drug measures very neatly. . .

Sandmeyer - 11-10-2009 at 04:59

Quote: Originally posted by Mossydie

Well, a much better analogy would be alcohol and nicotine. Where are the "moral obligations" to criminalize them? What truly is immoral (or should be in a reasonable society) is when The State makes it illegal for the individual to dock certain ligands into his own receptors. That's tyranny and is no different from criminalizing the act of preciving certain colors or smells.

1281371269 - 11-10-2009 at 05:14

Alcohol and nicotine doesn't provide an analogy...

The issue with these is that they are too ingrained into culture. We're past the point at which they could be eradicated because the majority of the population would be against that - no politician would ever do anything that would loose such large numbers of voters. But in the case of the other drugs, luckily enough we're not at the stage where they can't be wiped out, and clearly the majority of the population feels it's a good thing to try to eradicate them.

Sandmeyer - 11-10-2009 at 05:37

Quote:

Alcohol and nicotine doesn't provide an analogy...

Yes they do.

Quote:

The issue with these is that they are too ingrained into culture.

That's not even an argument. Culture? Do you meen apple pie and baseball? Besides, why would your "culture" decide what is legal or not for someone else to dock into his receptors? Sounds absurd.

Quote:

We're past the point at which they could be eradicated because the majority of the population would be against that - no politician would ever do anything that would loose such large numbers of voters.

Vast majority of the population is against the war - but wars there are. The population are the outsiders, for all practical purposes they have no say in the shapings of the policies that affects their lifes. So, no that argument isn't valid either, the state can criminalize without population liking the legislation, the file-sharing-copyright issue is one of many such examples. In state-capitalist society the state is owned and used as an instrument by mega corporations for their own private interests. Financial corporation bailout is one recent example, people didn't like it but who cares? Thst's the reality, by the people for the people is a comfortable illusion.

[Edited on 11-10-2009 by Sandmeyer]

Vogelzang - 11-10-2009 at 06:03

This is an interesting patent. Phenylpropanolamine used to be OTC in the US, but isn't any more. Maybe another hydrogenation method could be used, ie. CTH.

US 2243295 Phenylpropanolamine and HCOH hydrogenated (Ni catalyst) to produce phenylisopropylmethylamine

Vogelzang - 11-10-2009 at 06:06

More patents.

2146473 Methylation of phenylisopropylamine, 1) using methyl iodide on benzaldehyde Schiff base, and 2) using HCOH and activated Al

2146474 Para hydroxy P2P, alcohol, 40% aqueous CH3NH2, reduction using activated Al turnings

2414031 Nitromethane + aldehyde + PtO catalyst --> secondary amine

2700682 Ketimine reduction, example 1: P2P, CH3NH2, KOH drying agent, example 2: catalytic reduction using Pd/C

2828343 P2P + CH3NH2 reduction using cupric oxide catalyst

3925475 P2P-like imines reduced with NaBH4

[Edited on 11-10-2009 by Vogelzang]

1281371269 - 11-10-2009 at 06:10

You seem to misunderstand - I simply argued that as these drugs can be eradicated then every effort should be made to achieve that, EVEN IF it might be futile in the long run.

But hang on - you weren't the guy I had a similar argument with over a youtube video were you?

Vogelzang - 11-10-2009 at 06:12

2011790 p-MeO-P2P aminated with MeNH3Cl + NaOOCH (example 4)

2205530 2MeO-P2P, activated Al turnings, ether, 40% MeNH2 refluxed 6 hours

2382686 4Me-P2P from Me-C6H6CH2CN + EtOAc using Na in EtOH, 4Me-P2P aminated with MeNH2 using Ni catalyst and H2 at several atmospheres and 90-100º C

5220068 1,3-diphenylacetone (example 5), 96% EtOH, n-propylamine, Al foils(Hg)

http://www.pat2pdf.org

hissingnoise - 11-10-2009 at 06:15

Quote: Originally posted by Mossydie

But in the case of the other drugs, luckily enough we're not at the stage where they can't be wiped out, and clearly the majority of the population feels it's a good thing to try to eradicate them.

And paradoxically, all efforts at eradication have had the opposite effect.
The most dangerous drugs have been glamourised by prohibition. . .

entropy51 - 11-10-2009 at 06:42

Quote: Originally posted by Vogelzang

More patents.

Chemporn for people who have neither chemicals nor glassware. Drooling over all the ways they could get laid if they just had a 3 neck flask.

Vogelzang - 12-10-2009 at 06:55

Vicks inhalers contain l-methamphetamine aka levfetamine, levo-methaphetamine, or l-desoxyephedrine. You should be able to convert it into the racemic form using these processes:

US 2608583 Method for stereo-chemical equilibration of secondary carbinamines

US 2797243 Improved method for converting l-amphetamine into d-l-amphetamine

http://ep.espacenet.com/numberSearch

http://www.pat2pdf.org

Polverone - 12-10-2009 at 09:17

The original question has been answered, and the recent discussion seems none too encouraging.