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Journal Some Woman's Journal: So, like, how much is a dose of meth anyway? 21

Journal by Some Woman

I last touched on this subject in November of 2003, when my fine state passed a law banning the sale of cold medications to persons under 18, as well as limiting the quantity to 2 boxes. Yes, I have been ID'd every time I've bought Drixoral (my meth precursor of choice) in the past year. It comes up bright red on the self checkout and you can't continue until a clerk checks your ID.

But apparently these measures weren't doing enough to save the children. Because the MN legislature is back...and more ineffectual than ever! This article (swjournal/crappystick) informs me that the MN Senate has just passed a measure that would place all pseudoephedrine medications behind the pharmacy counter, and would require that all purchasers show ID (which you have to now anyway) and sign for the meds. An amendment that would allow gas stations to carry cold meds in a locked cabinet was shot down, meaning you will now only be able to buy them in stores containing pharmacies, and only during pharmacy hours. It wouldn't shock me if prescriptions for Sudafed were the next step.

I previously calculated the quantity of methamphetamine that a wannabe chemist could produce from a box of Tylenol Cold. My calculation and editorializing is reproduced below.

Looking at my Non-drowsy Tylenol Cold, there are 30 mg of pseudoephedrine hydrochloride per tablet. At 24 tablets per box, this makes a mere 720 mg of PEHCL. For the purpose of calculating yield, I present to you:

PEHCL molecular formula: C10H15NO*HCl
Methamphetamine molecular formula: C10H15N

Lets assume that the average meth producer has the experimental technique of a not-so-bright high school student, and, as such, they react their feedstock with a 30% yield. Also assume that the reaction is 1:1 (which, it should be- look at the similarity in formulae.)

There are 0.00134 moles of PEHCL per box of cold meds, which will give you 0.000402 moles of Meth. This equals: 60 mg of meth produced per box of cold meds.

All that work for less than a tenth of a gram of product? Not freaking likely. If you're going to make meth, you are going to make meth. These people don't fuck around. I remember a story from 2002 about the theft of 50,000 cold pills from Health Services at the U of MN. That is the quantity that meth producers need to work with.

But really, way to look productive without actually doing anything except for being acutely annoying, Minnesota!

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So, like, how much is a dose of meth anyway? More

So, like, how much is a dose of meth anyway?

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  • It makes them feel like someone is doing something for their children.

    So they don't have to.

  • It wouldn't shock me if prescriptions for Sudafed were the next step.

    Illegal Sudafed labs. Minivans full of sick parents and cranky sick kids cruising the seedy streets looking for Sudafed dealers.

    Seriously, this is insane. I did some reading, and discovered (via wikipedia): "It is estimated for every 1 pound of methamphetamine produced, 5 pounds of hazardous waste is also produced." Wow, so what is all this other stuff that is needed besides the sudafed? I finally found a list of "precursors" (stuff neede

    • Sulfuric acid is in car batteries and also used for some industrial cleaning products. You can use this stuff to make a large variety of really fun things. It also has a jingle!

      Little Johnny took a drink
      but he shall drink no more.
      For what he thought was H2O
      Was H2SO4.

      Toluene is a solvent, found in paint thinners and other places, much like acetone.

      The logical step is of course to start requiring id checks and signatures at the home despot and auto stores.

      It's really incredibly diffi
      • Yeah but where do you buy sulfuric acid? So they buy car batteries then? I wonder how much they need, like part of a car batterys worth maybe? It looks like you need red phosphorus in fairly large quantities (matches), personally I would rather they just ban matches than screw around with cold medication. When was the last time you lit a match? Wouldn't a lighter (or one of those "long lighter" thingies) be easier to carry around/use at home? I can't even remember the last time I bought matches, but I suppo
      • Reminds me of one of my favorite kitschy Christian metal band songs, Acid Head [tourniquet.net], by Tourniquet [tourniquet.net]. Really, I guess that's all off-topic, but I'm blaming you, Buffer.
    • Oops, forgot two!

      Muriatic Acid, AKA Hydrochloric acid, is found in cleaning products(concrete cleaner, home depot, diluted HCl or H2S04). You also make it in your gut. It's also simple to synthesise.

      Anhydrous Ammonia. Ammonia. Cleaning products.

      So I guess to make meth you go to the home depot, hit up an advance autoparts, then pop over to the grocery store. Or you could probably just hit wal-mart for your one-stop meth lab shopping needs.
      • Or you could probably just hit wal-mart for your one-stop meth lab shopping needs.

        Does this sound like a great slogan or what? "Walmart: preferred by more methlabs worldwide for all their shopping needs!"

    • Toluene can be nitrated to produce TNT (trinitrotoluene). Tolune is basically a benzene ring with a methyl group with three hydroxyls, IIRC (or is that glycerine?). I think that both are based on a benzene ring. I'm not sure of the nitration process, though. I do know that it's easy to nitrate glycerine, given strong nitric acid and strong sulfuric acid (18 molar, to suck out the water molecules). It's harder to keep the nitroglycering from exploding as soon as it forms (the reaction is exothermic). I
    • Muriatic Acid is used to clean toilets and urinals becuase it helps de-scale/de-lime the deposits/stains from the ammonia reacting with hard water. (at least that was the explination I was given)

      -Ab
    • (catching up on messages)
      I buy acetone and muriatic acid all the time, as well as boric acid crystals and isopropyl alcohol. But then, I'm a silversmith. I stay away from the sulfuric acid, although I have legitimate uses for it, just because it's too blasted dangerous to consider handling withiout a major upgrade to my studio.

      As to the "do normal people buy this stuff" question: I really can't help you there. I'm all too aware that "normal" people don't own 3 blowtorches, either.

  • 5-10mg.
    • Eek. I wouldn't trust some back-of-the-van chemist to not overdose you. Then, again, they probably want to short you to get more money.
      • The purity of street meth is something on the order of 5-15%, so a 5mg dose involves the ingestion of 50-100mg of anonymous substance. The usual recreational dose is on the order of 20mg, and very often more, so the 1000mg package usually sold on the street is often just split between two or three people. Heavy abusers can do much more.
  • The critical thing for a politician is to be perceived as doing something. This leads to problems when hasty action is wrong, the action taken ignores the actual problem, or when the best action would be no action. But these guys keep on getting elected because they are seen to be doing something.
  • As someone that will hopefully soon be on the enforcement end of the narcotics debate there are a few other issues to consider.

    It isn't that it is hard to have high yield... the problem is that kids in junionr high and high school and pulling the formula and instructions off the web and trying it on their own in small batches. If the materials are accessiable to them even in small batches that is plenty of the stuff to get chemically dependant and feed the habbit.

    Then they move towards higher quantities.
  • That reminds me. They are supposed to have cough syrups behind-the-counter (at least, that which contains pseudoephedrine) here as well, but either it isn't being properly upheld, or there are some meth dealers who don't understand the need for the pseudoephedrine-based cough syrup.

    The other day my father was in a Dollar General store and a man walked up to the counter with two boxes of cough syrup (no, not two little boxes. I am talking about tons of little boxes within two *big* boxes.) The lady at th
  • Not that I would actually know people involved in this industry, but supposing I did...

    A common tactic is to pay unemployed people and/or addicts to go around to multiple pharmacies, buying a small number of packets of tablets. If you have a handful of people buying 2-3 packets at half a dozen pharmacies, that soon adds up to a reasonable quantity.

    Stealing a large shipment of cold tablets is (generally) a risky prospect (unless you have a bent cop/security guard on the payroll who can "accidently" lose tr

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