Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Synthesizing prescription drugs for personal use.

Thanatops1s - 16-2-2014 at 20:44

This is 100% hypothetical. I'm in excellent health and don't take anything other than the occasional ibuprofen. But it occurred to me, let's say you had a prescription for something. The script entitles you to legally possess a certain quantity. Now If you then synthesized no more than that quantity for yourself, is there any actual law broken? When you get a prescription, you're allowed to choose your own pharmacy, well what If you choose yourself? My guess is that if you got caught no doubt they'd mess with you, but have any laws actually been broken?

DrAldehyde - 16-2-2014 at 20:59

Well to manufacture prescription drugs in the US, you would have to be registered with the FDA. So even though you wouldn't be selling, you would be breaking the law.

http://www.fda.gov/ForIndustry/FDABasicsforIndustry/ucm23462...


But really, you didn't think Big Pharma would let you get away with that now did you?

[Edited on Feb-17-2014 by DrAldehyde]

[Edited on Feb-17-2014 by DrAldehyde]

Chemosynthesis - 17-2-2014 at 08:22

You would probably also be guilty of violating zoning laws, documenting various reagents, etc. Additionally, if your compounds of interest are scheduled, hierarchical scheduling is annoyingly compartmentalized. We have a schedule II permit at work, yet we had to fill out paperwork for testosterone of all things. Let's ignore the fact free samples are handed out medicinally, and you can easily synthesize it from health supplements for the elderly....


Oh, and a schedule III form doesn't cover IIIA. Great, huh?

organicchemist25 - 17-2-2014 at 09:47

Wow. I did not know you had to register with the FDA. I do the same thing Thanatops1s was inquiring about. I do a little more than what they would allow me, but I thought since I had a valid script, I was ok for the most part. Thanks for the link and info on that!