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07/23/2004 Archived Entry: "Crackdown on research chemicals (aka "designer drugs")"

THE MEDIA CALLS THEM "DESIGNER DRUGS." The industry calls them research chemicals and rings them with careful warnings that they have not been tested or approved for use by human beings.

But the DEA has begun a crackdown, based on the fact that these chemicals produce "Ecstacy-like" or "LSD-like" experiences.

The anonymous friend who sent this news used a remailer and a nym, so fearful have we been forced to become even about discussing d-r-u-g-s. He wrote:

This email won't really concern most blog readers. But a loss of freedom for any of us is a loss of freedom for all of us, IMHO.

For the past ~6 years numerous psychedelic drugs have existed in a kind of legal limbo. Not explicity outlawed, but illegal for human consumption. Many capitalists have been selling said chemicals over the internet. ... In the past 3 years the business flourished with a multitude of vendors each trying to undercut each other on price and provide better service...the free market at work. I thought it was crazy for American companies to sell the so-called "research chemicals" to other Americans, without of course having donated the requisite tens of thousands of dollars to Orrin Hatch to get "Officially Sanctioned" by the .Gov.

Well apparently I was right and they were wrong, unfortunatly. The DEA did a multi-state, multi-jurisdictional raid and shut down most of the vendors, which doubtlessly will scare the remaining ones out of business. These research chemicals aren't like the classic illicit drugs and likely won't ever reach their current popularity, assuming the government continues on its present trajectory. Unlike meth and ecstasy, the synthesis of the research chemicals, known by their abbreviations, "2C-T7, 4-OH-DIPT, AMT, 2C-I, etc." is rather tough, requiring along the lines of a modern research lab ... putting them out of reach of most "kitchen chemists." Unlike LSD, another tough to synthesis drug, the profitability of said drugs isn't high enough to make illicit mass production that attractive. And last but not least, the dose-variability of the research chemicals is so high that it is practically impossible to mass produce easy to sell "doses," for example 100 mg of ecstasy is considered a 'good dose' by most drug users but 25 mg of 2C-I, for example would be too high for about 30% of dosees and too low for another 30% of dosees.

Sadly it looks like the era of reasonable availibility of these compounds is over. Surely numerous drug users are going to return to the street to buy drugs of uncertain origin and purity, instead of high quality, very pure chemicals.

Posted by Claire @ 02:30 PM CST
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