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Author: Subject: Patriot Act or War on Drugs
FloridaAlchemist
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[*] posted on 9-3-2006 at 16:31
Patriot Act or War on Drugs


Is the patriot act for combating terrorists
or arresting consumers for buying sudafed?:mad:
What does methamphetamine manufacture have to do with terrorism? How did this get incorporated into the patriot act?
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[*] posted on 9-3-2006 at 16:57


You'd think they'd be focusing more on controlling the borders than controlling their local illicit activities. Looking purely at the economics of the situation, the international drug trade hurts the economy, the local drug trade actually benefits it. Of course, it's not going into the US GDP, but that money will enter the marketplace instead of leaving it.

The problem with the patriot act is that no one has been able to come up with examples of it's direct abuse. Of course, I read that during the Bush regime, the number of court cases in the US with completely sealed records has more than tripled. I wonder if the two are related?

Also, can you quote the Patriot act for the section you are talking about that concerns manufacture of illicit drugs?
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[*] posted on 9-3-2006 at 18:01
Some Patriot Act Info


The law also takes aim at the methamphetamine trade by imposing new restrictions on the sale of over-the-counter cold and allergy medicines, which contain a key ingredient for the drug. Customers will be limited to buying 300 30-milligram pills in a month or 120 such pills in a day. The measure would make an exception for "single-use" sales _ individually packaged pseudoephedrine products.

By Sept. 30, retailers will be required to sell such medicines from behind the counter and purchasers would have to show ID and sign log books.

"Meth is easy to make," the president said. "It is highly addictive. It is ruining too many lives across our country. The bill introduces commonsense safeguards that would make many of the ingredients used in manufacturing meth harder to obtain in bulk, and easier for law enforcement to track."
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[*] posted on 10-3-2006 at 04:11


Title VII of the Patriot Act as presented to the monkey for his X less than 48 hrs ago:

Attachment: patriot_act_title_vii.doc (69kB)
This file has been downloaded 821 times

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[*] posted on 10-3-2006 at 05:49


I don't really see the correllation either. Actually, if manufacturers inside of the US are totally and successfully prevented from accomplishing their goal, then not only would the terrorist organizations have a field day importing narcotics, but they would make a tremendous profit in a seller's market. Suppressing local means of production is a poor economic decision for any nation in any market.
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[*] posted on 19-3-2006 at 07:38


If I wanted to raise money for a terrorist group I would think about doing it by selling drugs. It's very lucrative and, if I'm doing it to fund an illegal activity I'm hardly going to care that trafficing is illegal.
I'm afraid the so called "wars" on terror and drugs are related. Both are doomed to fail.
Both will hit honest citizens.
Both serve to keep the people frightened enough to not object to the government grabbing more power.
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[*] posted on 19-3-2006 at 12:33


Quote:

If I wanted to raise money for a terrorist group I would think about doing it by selling drugs. It's very lucrative and, if I'm doing it to fund an illegal activity I'm hardly going to care that trafficing is illegal.


Hell no. Drug trafficking leaves lots of traces and everyone in that bussiness goes great lengths in saving their own asses once they get busted.

Also, narcotics traficking is morally incompatible with the ideology of Al Quaeda and the Taliban. Remember that they had nearly entirely shut down opium growing in Afghanistan.

The problem with terrorism is not the funds, there are lots of people that will sponsor. It's getting the funds in the right place at the right time without LE getting a sniff of it.




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[*] posted on 21-3-2006 at 01:40


It's not Al-Quaeda that our government should be worried about. Suppressing local production will only strengthen the distribution systems of violent street gangs that have extended across U.S borders from the south; prominently among them, MS-13. The war on drugs targets american citizens with real property, equity, and assets. It is a business proposal, fueled by all the money that is made from RICO and other government seizures. What they should be focusing on is border patrol and gang intelligence. But while the government is chasing imaginary threats cooked up by 'analysts' there are very real threats to their national security already growing within their borders. I don't abuse drugs, but if it were up to me, i'd buy mine from my neighbor as opposed to a thug.
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[*] posted on 21-3-2006 at 16:14
Meth labs


These labs getting busted all over the U.S. is the cause of the new regulations. The Bush
Whitehouse regards them as narco-terrorists. Remember the anti-drug commercials a
few years ago that claimed if you smoked marijuana that you're supporting terrorists.
Still, it appears that the majority of methamphetamine is still imported and it's not being
manufactured outside the U.S. using ephedrine and it's derivatives. More likely, it's
the older methods.




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[*] posted on 21-3-2006 at 17:14


I saw a piece on "60 minutes" last Sunday on what New York City police are doing to prevent terrorism. One thing mentioned is working with beauty shops, etc to flag any unusual demand for H2O2. I found this rather bizarre.

On meth production I believe that 65% of that used in the US is from Mexican superlabs. I assume that they get their ephedrine and other supplies from China since they seem to be willing to sell anybody anything.

I'm glad to see that Mom & Pop meth production is being curtailed through making pseudoephedrine cold remedies virtually non-OTC. Anything that stops local production of this heinous drug should take LE's attention off home chemistry.

[Edited on 22-3-2006 by Magpie]

[Edited on 22-3-2006 by Magpie]




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[*] posted on 21-3-2006 at 17:28


There has been this commercial on recently for 'Sudafed PE'. The ads use the phrase 'sudafed PE' many times. This is some twisted advertising on the part of Sudafed's marketing team, in a time when medicine which contains pseudoephedrine is being taken off the market OTC wise. They are trying to capitalize of pseudoepedrine's other uses, pretty much waving a flag saying "hey look! our product still has the stuff you want!" at all the 'mom and pop' meth labs.
The comercial sickens me, and most people don't even notice, mainly 'cooks' will notice due to them likely using PE as an acronym for pseudoephedrine themselves, others will just think its another nonsense medicine term..

[Edited on 22-3-2006 by rogue chemist]




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[*] posted on 21-3-2006 at 18:19


Quote:
Originally posted by rogue chemist
There has been this commercial on recently for 'Sudafed PE'. The ads use the phrase 'sudafed PE' many times. This is some twisted advertising on the part of Sudafed's marketing team, in a time when medicine which contains pseudoephedrine is being taken off the market OTC wise. They are trying to capitalize of pseudoepedrine's other uses, pretty much waving a flag saying "hey look! our product still has the stuff you want!" at all the 'mom and pop' meth labs.
The comercial sickens me, and most people don't even notice, mainly 'cooks' will notice due to them likely using PE as an acronym for pseudoephedrine themselves, others will just think its another nonsense medicine term..

You have it completely backwards. Sudafed PE does not contain pseudoephedrine, only phenylephrine. It's useless for making methamphetamine. The company is promoting and familiarizing people with their new pseudoephedrine-free formulation now that their classic products face stricter control.




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[*] posted on 21-3-2006 at 18:35


Oh jeez, my bad. I could have sworn that it did contain pseudoephedrine, I guess I was wrong, thanks for clearing that up.



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[*] posted on 22-3-2006 at 03:06
New Ingredient


Just give the illicit chemists some time and they'll find a way to convert that one also. After
all, it was the illicit chemists who found the way to convert ephedrine wasn't it ?

Oh hell, it won't even matter. The new laws require id and a limit on the amount of ephedrine
products a person can purchase which means the base ingredient is still out there. The
meth makers will have to get more creative about their purchases. That's all it means.

BTW, slightly OT I know, but for those who haven't seen it, I suggest downloading the
"Strike Dateline Interview" from my FTP. It's under \VIDEO. It can be played in RealPlayer,
NTSC AVI, 115 kbps DivX video, 130 kbps MPEG Layer-3 audio, 285 MB file length.
Approximately 42 minutes 16 seconds, it details the investigation and downfall of
Strike, Hobart Huson, who is currently serving 8 years in Federal prison with a concurrent
sentence of 7 years from the state of Arizona.




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[*] posted on 22-3-2006 at 04:07


Playing devil's advocate here for a minute....

"Cooking" meth from pills is all but over and done with in my neck of the woods... not so much because of the pill quantity restrictions, but because the pill manufacturers have won the extraction war... many an attempt to get the goodies out of the pills using "old school" solvent extraction techniques will result in something of the color and consistancy of elephant semen being formed in the flask... and although I am not about to test out my hypothesis, I can just about be sure they are putting the same "gaks" in the PE pills too so no hydroxy-ephedrine can be extracted either.

BTW it IS theoretically possible to make a methamphetamine analog using PE istead of PSE... the only diffrence between the PE and the PSE is a hydroxy group attached to the ring. Apparently over on wet dreams it was reported that by altering HI/RP reduction reaction it can be reduced down to hydroxy-methamphetamine which supposedly has similar physiological effects to normal meth.

Anyways, couple the gaks with the quantity restrictions and lack of cheap readily available red phosphorus and/or anhydrous ammonia, and now suddenly law enforcement has pretty much been put out of the meth lab busting business... the cold pill quantity restrictions were the last nail in the proverbial coffin. Just a guess, but I'd say about 95% of the meth labs in my area have simply dried up since the "cooks" simply do not know how to adapt. The few survivors have managed to find a brand of pills clean enough to extract and are now essentially manufacturing for personal use only.

So what ya had left is a local drug market which until recently had no competition. The mexicans quickly stepped in to fill that niche. Their so called "meximeth" is all done in mexico and imported into the USA in surprisingly high purity. They don't put the cutting agents into it till it gets to where its going because well hell, who wants to haul all that extra weight and mass? If you think about it, higher purity makes it easier to smuggle because you have to smuggle less of it... therefore it only makes sense to transport finished product across the border.

I also don't see P2P labs coming back into popularity because, well, essentially P2P is a bitch to make and yields for the most part suck. The only viable "commercial" method I know of for making large amounts of P2P is the willergrodt-kindler reaction on styrene and then reducing the formed phenylacetic acid down to the ketone with with pyridine and acetic anhydride... the former being very expensive and the latter still heavily watched. Sure there are tons of other ways to make it, but those running the meth labs are only interested in two things... the ease of manufacturing and not getting busted. Why bother with spending thousands of dollars on lab equipment, trying to aquire chemicals, and running said lab when you can buy a pound for $12,000-$16,000 off a mexican and double your money in a matter of a couple weeks?

Sadly, for us amateur chemists in the USA, even though the meth problem is being eliminated the government will probably never ease up on the DEA List I chemical precursor restrictions... that means no more phosphorus unless ya make it yourself.
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[*] posted on 22-3-2006 at 12:41
Making chemicals


That's what we'll all do eventually as agenices like the DEA, ATF, and CPSC keep watching,
restricting, or banning chemicals. I enjoy making my own pyro chemicals with little or no
fear. Are they going to regulate salt and aluminum foil too ?

Magpie mentioned the watching of H2O2 purchases from beauty salons in NYC. I'd say
they're looking for AP makers.




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[*] posted on 22-3-2006 at 13:27


> the only diffrence between the PE and the PSE is a hydroxy group attached to the ring.

No, it isn't.

> it was the illicit chemists who found the way to convert ephedrine wasn't it ?

Not the popular HI method.

> even though the meth problem is being eliminated the government will probably never ease up on the DEA List I chemical precursor restrictions

No shit. Fighting drugs will always be politically popular, and it is getting more and more difficult for politicians to find new laws to make.

[Edited on 22-3-2006 by S.C. Wack]
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[*] posted on 22-3-2006 at 17:38
Amateur chemists in the USA


I guess amateur chemists in the USA are going to be labeled Terrorists in the new world order:mad:
If you experiment with chemicals as a hobby
then you must be screwing up the Environment , making drugs , fireworks or bombs:(
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[*] posted on 22-3-2006 at 18:06


Now now, sorry to throw a stick into your wheels (how does that saying go again?) -
the REASON GENUINE amateur chemists suffer from all these laws is a) a large bunch makes drugs, which is outlawed througout the world, and b) some make explosives, which causes harm and death in some parts of the world, either by accident or by malevolence.

This sheds a bad light on the genuine amateur chemist, and thus they suffer by those who use chemistry to either cause harm, or to make money, or to cause harm by taking or providing drugs.

If neither faction existed, then genuine amateur chemists would be in the clear, and free of suspicion. What do you think why physics nerds who play with high voltages, etc, never have to deal with these worries? Or biologists, playing with microscopes, or whatever? It's becuase they haven't been used to cause harm. If chemists refrained from causing harm to themselves or others, then chemicals wouldnt be outlawed.

Thing is, I don't even mind if someone cooks up some drug for himself. It's like excessive drinking, the harm you cause is mostly to yourself. Those instances where you CAN cause harm by drinking, is when you drive. Hence drink-driving is outlawed, rightly so.
With other drugs, some greedy fuckers think it's a business, and then someone screws up by taking too much, or too frequently, and people DIE (or become socially dysfunct). Hence those chemicals are outlawed. Same goes for explosives, people die, and people have been known to use it against others (tim mc veigh for instance). Can you blame a government for outlawing things that harm society, cause deaths, or societal disruption?

The counterforce to this is the fear of the rise of fascism, many see all this banning as a governmental attempt to gain more power. Although this may be true in some parts of the world - lets not forget the cause - it's those who cause HARM that force the society to act against it.




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[*] posted on 22-3-2006 at 18:21


"lets not forget the cause - it's those who cause HARM that force the society to act against it."

Who is causing the harm here? It is called the politics of fear - politicians exaggerate external threats to create authority. Terrorism, paedophiles, drugs. The gullible swallow the bullshit hook, line and sinker and more than that, regurgitate it to others. Switch the brain on sunshine.
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[*] posted on 22-3-2006 at 18:42


Yes it may well be that politicians *abuse* this for their own benefit - that is to gain power. I acknowledged this above. It may well be that those politicians cause, with their over-reacting policies, cause more harm than the original 'threat'.
The CAUSE nonetheless aren't the politicians. The cause are those who cause harm in the first place, which are the drug and bomb makers (again, how this is abused by politicians is another issue. Don't mingle their mis-doings with those who started it). Now, quite honestly, I got my interest in science through pyro stuff, and that's fine. Sadly, carrying this a bit further, great harm can be done. And it HAS been done. Who can blame ignorant society for wanting to minimise the harm?

Before you lash out again, care to explain WHY high voltage transformers, hell why in fact NO other amateur hobby is regarded with suspicion, except the hobby chemists?




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[*] posted on 22-3-2006 at 20:25


I strongly disagree. Drugs are at worst a means to self-destruction, like alcohol, gambling, or motorcycle racing. It's true that their effects cannot be completely internalized to the user (few activities can), but the quasi-military fight against the harm they cause is the promoter of much of their harm and out of all proportion to whatever remaining harm can be considered "intrinsic" to the substance. Basically, I am boggled that anyone can support the modern Prohibition when it was already tried once, disastrously, and there is no evidence that modern approaches are any closer to success.

The fear of terrorism that leads to draconian explosives regulation is even more astounding when you consider the supposed danger that was being reacted to. In the last 20 years there have been only 2 large bombings within the US. I don't think there has been any time in US history where explosives were more popular criminal instruments than (say) knives, blunt objects, or flammable liquids. I'm pretty sure the same is true of European history too. Laws more strictly controlling explosives are confronting a nonexistent crisis with a nonexistent solution. If Israel can't stop clandestine manufacture of explosives despite decades of experience and a significantly greater willingness to use extreme measures, I don't imagine how the US and EU think they could prevent terrorist acquisition of explosives. In the most recent example of the CPSC trying to outlaw a wide swath of chemicals that can be used to make pyrotechnics/explosives, the objective isn't even preventing malicious use. The objective is preventing people from entertaining themselves with dangerous devices... which is classic nanny-statism along the same lines as the drug war.

There's no law of nature that says how societies must act when confronting criminal violence or the negative externalities of recreational drug use. There is a clear line between action A and reaction B only with hindsight. Accepting its "inevitability" with the aid of hindsight promotes resignation to ongoing and future erosions of personal liberties. To put it another way and to tie it in to another hot topic: are the human rights abuses committed at Abu Gharib, Guantanamo Bay, and other US-run prisons in recent years the fault of the 9/11 highjackers? I would say no, absolutely not. The abuses fall on the shoulders of those who drafted and implemented policies permitting abuse as well as those of the abusers themselves. Oh, and those who elected officials who support or fail to root out and stop these abuses: they're to blame too, though each individual can't be attributed a very big slice of the problem. Shifting blame to anyone else just lets the abusers get away with even more.

Regulatory agencies and politicians will not be pacified by the mere disappearance of "threats." Any newly perceived threat is proof of their need for more control and any receding threat is proof that strict control is what solves problems.

As regards amateur chemistry, I have two predictions to make:

1) The increased regulation of non-prescription medications containing facile precursors to methamphetamine will lead to a drastic reduction in the number of domestic US methamphetamine producers. The crucial materials for conversion of these formerly little-regulated products to methamphetamine are/were iodine and phosphorus or certain phosphorus compounds, or (alternatively) anhydrous ammonia and alkali metals. Demand for these materials in clandestine chemistry will drastically fall as availability of precursor medications falls.

2) Even though anhydrous ammonia, phosphorus and certain of its compounds, and iodine will be much less important to clandestine chemistry in the post-sudafed era, the DEA will never relinquish control of what it has already taken hold of. Even if hydrogen iodide/phosphorus reduction of pseudoephedrine recedes into drug history, like clandestine production of quaaludes, red phosphorus will remain strictly controlled indefinitely.

Those are my predictions. Bueraucracies are loathe to relinquish power, even power that they have small need for. If I am wrong, and phosphorus is delisted 10 years from now after domestic pill-cooks have precipitously declined, I will be as grateful as I am flabbergasted.

If I'm right, and phosphorus remains under DEA control long after its importance to clandestine drug production has receded, will you finally see that the slow strangulation of personal liberties is really the fault of respectable persons in positions of power and not shady characters in the streets?



Now, the long postscript about my vision that will never come to pass:

I don't think that producing mind-altering substances or selling them to persons over the age of 18 should be in any way a crime, whatever scale it is done on. I think that fraud should still be a crime: the composition of that mysterious white powder should be fully and truly disclosed. I am not opposed to fairly heavy taxes on drug sales, as there are on alcohol sales, but the taxes should not be so high as to revive black markets. I do not think that allowing everyone to use drugs will be entirely without negative consequences for the user or people around them, that everyone would be enlightened if they just tried the right drug, or any other hippie drug cheerleading nonsense. I just think that the drug war is a vast waste of money and a terrible affront to personal liberties.

For things more dangerous than drugs, e.g. potent poisons, explosives, automobiles, and weapons, I would not fear registration and licensing as long as they were not precursors to or means of prohibition. The problem, particularly when it comes to (say) guns, is that examples of governments that did not follow registration with eventual prohibition and/or confiscation are few compared to examples of those that did. But if we could cede our government to benevolent, incorruptible, personal-liberty-loving gods instead of mere men, I'd have no problem with registration and tracking. I would still want mutual transparency, though: the makers and enforcers of law watch over the population, and the population watches over the makers and enforcers of law. Citizens should be able to check up on the police nearly as freely as the police check up on citizens.

I am basically a fierce, nutbar-fringe libertarian when it comes to personal liberties. Where I differ with big-L Libertarians is that I do not believe we'd all be better off if the government were all but eliminated and the market counted on to take up the slack. Private coercion is little better than government coercion, even if it's different. But I do agree with their strident defense of personal liberties, and share their wish that every politician who ever exclaimed "think of the children!" or "it's a post-9/11 world!" while tightening the leash of control would kindly drop dead.




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[*] posted on 23-3-2006 at 11:27


Quote:

"lets not forget the cause - it's those who cause HARM that force the society to act against it."


The governmental use of explosives and the harm done by it far exceeds that of clandestine use of explosives.

"Society" is a big blanket term to throw over large crimes (eg war, etc) and to bury them in shared responsibility.
"We're all responsible, so let's not burn our own asses by prosecuting".

Society as such does not act. A very small part of it decides what should happen, most follow passively, few rebel.

The government says they need nukes because other states have nukes. So why don't give everyone the right to make explosives? MAD on a small scale should also work, given the previous logic.

Anyway, a system that gives in to more and more protectionism eventually strangles itself in a deadlock. You have a very large body of people enforcing and updating the law, with very few actually producing something for the society within very strict boundaries.




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[*] posted on 23-3-2006 at 18:15
Lets not foget the EPA arm of goverment


Well stated Polverone.
If Uncle Sam finds out you have a home lab and you have chemicals like mercury the EPA might clean-up your work area and yard then send you a huge bill for the clean-up:mad:.
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[*] posted on 25-3-2006 at 01:03
The only thing to fear


Personally, I believe that the current restrictions of precursors, especially ephedrine, were a long time coming. No one should cry "fascism" or outrage. This would have happened eventually with or without the patriot act. Think about it. Sassafras oil is gone. Research chemicals are being scheduled after just a few reported deaths. Methamphetamine is an epidemic bigger than ecstacy and all the research chemicals combined.

And whether people like to admit it or not, it's widespread distribution has a very real cost on society. Anyone who touts that people have a right to destroy themselves with addiction has never met a serious pusher. As outlandish as this sounds, there are people who actively initiate and promote addiction for profit. How long could anyone reasonably expect one of the major sources of methamphetamine to go completely uncontrolled? For my part, I could care less.

My point here is that if you are involved in clandestine activity, and you are not intelligent enough to adapt and circumvent the need for listed reagents, then you've no business gambling your freedom in the first place. It's like sitting down to a chess board with no idea how to play. What are you really willing to wager?

To follow this idea, if you are pursuing legitimate or (if you're anything like me) mostly legitimate experiments, then you've little to fear from ordering suspicious reagents. It may be an inconvenience that some useful reagents are not availiable to you, but by the same token there are also ways around these incoveniences. Clandestine chemists don't give chemists a bad name any more than bank robbers give soldiers a bad name.

And as a final note, I have seen some very bright minds pursue an interest in chemistry that began as an interest in drugs. It is a detour, if you will, from a path of self destruction, to a path of scholarship and success. There will always be drugs availiable to the would-be drug user. Most of these will be brought into the country by men with guns. It is my belief that the social cost of allowing these potential scholars to slip through the cracks greater than any harm they might manage to do on their own.

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