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An unidentified illicit drug has been discovered by Australian chemists
- computerfriend 4y agoHow is it illicit if it is unidentified? Does Australia have a law against isomers?
- strangeattractr 4y agoThere's nothing Aussies like more than banning or prohibiting things. It is almost certainly illegal and if it isn't, it will be tomorrow.
- nibbleshifter 4y agoAfter the "novel psychoactive substance" boom of the 2010's some countries just blanket banned psychoactive substances with a handful of exceptions (alcohol, tobacco, caffeine). Australia enacted such laws in 2017. Everyone knew it was coming - eventually the politicians would tire of playing whackamolecule.
- notacoward 4y ago> eventually the politicians would tire of playing whackamolecule "Whackamolecule" is a great word for this phenomenon - both concise and evocative.
- sph 4y agoIllegality is not an intrinsic property of a chemical compound, even though the title might suggest so. What they have discovered is a previously unknown psychoactive molecule.
- sva_ 4y agoDepends on legislature. I think in the UK they broadly banned any "psychoactive" substance (ridiculous law, I know).
- awestroke 4y agoIncluding coffee and tea?
- irthomasthomas 4y agoNo, there was a carve out for established products.
- bearmode 4y agohttps://www.gov.uk/government/collections/psychoactive-substances-bill-2015 https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/psychoactive-subst... >excludes legitimate substances, such as food, alcohol, tobacco, nicotine, caffeine and medical products from the scope of the offence, as well as controlled drugs, which continue to be regulated by the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 It's a really shoddy law. The idea that all psychoactive substances are banned except 'legitimate' ones such as alcohol, tobacco, and nicotine is really funny.
- robotresearcher 4y agoThe legitimate substances are the legally permitted ones by definition. No scare quotes required. The property of legitimacy is with respect to laws, not common sense or popularity.
- cwillu 4y agoThe use of scare quotes in discussions _about_ the laws are a useful reminder that “legitimacy” has a technical definition other than what the reader might think plain english meaning is.
- 4y ago
- vintermann 4y agoIllegality is not an intrinsic property of anything, so of course that's not what the headline suggests. But it's not odd, unfair, or extreme to ban substances before they're explicitly known. For specific purposes or more generally. If I have some novel medical compound, of course I can't just mix it into my cookies. If I come up with some entirely novel gaseous organophosphate thing, not only am I forbidden from releasing it in the subway, but the government is quite justified in asking why the heck I even possess that stuff.
- computerfriend 4y agoThe headline not only suggests it, it explicitly states it.
- vintermann 4y agoIt says it's illegal, but that its illegality is an inherent property of the drug itself, as opposed to a conditional property coming from the laws of Australia, is just a fantastic straw man. It reads to me like OP is trying to suggest he headline is somehow absurd. It is not.
- etherael 4y ago> If I have some novel medical compound, of course I can't just mix it into my cookies. Why of course? What justification leads you to "of course" here. Not saying you are necessarily wrong but doesnt sound like say taking aspirin and adding some vitamins, despite now being a novel medical compound, would make it immediately and obviously illegal, letalone for personal use in cookies or otherwise. Not that the law ever had to or indeed does make sense.
- vintermann 4y agoPerhaps I should specify "cookies you intended to sell, or otherwise serve to people who have no reason to think they would contain anything but ingredients legal as food additives". I hope you agree food additives should not be legal by default just because no one explicitly listed it as illegal.
- girvo 4y agoDepends. In quite a few Australian states, any chemical that is similar in effect to an illicit drug is also an illicit drug. Yes it's a ridiculous law. In Queensland: > The definition of a dangerous drug (s 4 Drugs Misuse Act) includes synthetic or analogue drugs that: - have a chemical structure substantially similar to a drug in the schedules to the Regulation (or a salt, derivative or stereo-isomer thereof) - have a pharmacological effect substantially similar to those drugs - are intended to have a pharmacological effect that is substantially similar to those drugs. If I recall the legislation correctly, those are OR, not AND.
- CaptainZapp 4y agoAccording to a travel guide the licking of toads is illegal in Queensland[0] due to its psychoactive properties. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cane_toad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cane_toad
- reacweb 4y agoThis gives another perspective to fairy tales.
- Trouble_007 4y ago'Cane Toads: An Unnatural History' (1988) - IMDb : https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0130529/ https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0130529/ 'Cane Toads: An Unnatural History' : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cane_Toads:_An_Unnatural_History https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cane_Toads:_An_Unnatural_His... >'Cane Toads: An Unnatural History' site:youtube.com< : <https://html.duckduckgo.com/html/?q='Cane Toads: An Unnatural History' site:youtube.com https://html.duckduckgo.com/html/?q='Cane Toads: An Unnatura...>
- moe091 4y agoIs it just psychoactive toads, or can I continue to lick normal toads there?
- girvo 4y agoJust the psychoactive ones. Go nuts with other toads, as long as they are not native though: they have protections too
- bamboozled 4y agoFor some reason, anything that seems to alter consciousness is bad and is forbidden for use almost immediately by most authorities around the world. Except alcohol and tobacco, you can go wild with that because it's safe \s I will never, ever understand why Marijuana is illegal, I can guarantee you, even if this thing is relatively harmless, it will be outlawed immediately.
- ttyprintk 4y agoRecreational additives become illicit drugs based on the characteristics of the people who use them. As another poster mentioned about LSD analogues in Berlin, the users are likely well below the radar of criminal association. Viagra suffers no possibility of becoming illicit because its users are in power. Using marijuana in the 20th century suggested the threat of new forms of desegregated music and society.
- moe091 4y agoI can't tell which direction the causation goes in this case(I mean I'm sure it's both, at least to some degree). It also makes sense that drugs that are illegal are used by "criminals" or those associated with criminal behavior. In regards to new substances that aren't illegal yet, they are likely to be sought out by those who already use other illegal substances with similar effects
- lotsofpulp 4y ago> I will never, ever understand why Marijuana is illegal, I can guarantee you, even if this thing is relatively harmless, it will be outlawed immediately. Because of racism or tribalism.
- zamalek 4y agoOne great example of this is "the war on drugs." It was noted that marginalized and poverty-stricken communities (typically consisting of people of color) were the predominant users of recreational drugs. This worked out exactly as designed, allowing slavery/servitude to be unceremoniously reinstituted: https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/incarceration-rates-by-race-ethnicity-and-gender-in-the-u-s.html https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/incarceration-rates-by-r...
- x55j33 4y agoGlow, Slo-Mo or Substance D?
- guywhocodes 4y agoGuessing substance D, feels very 2022
- bryanrasmussen 4y agoI remember about 20 years ago an article in I think either Rolling Stone or Spin on people whose business was making new psychoactive compounds, which was basically making new amines to slot into the same places that LSD does but with different structures. Obviously this is a long time ago so my memory is a bit off, surely nothing else I have ever done has affected my memory in this case.
- iancmceachern 4y agoThere's a Hamilton's Pharmacopeia on this
- Liquix 4y agoDavid Nichols was cranking out novel psychedelics at Purdue around that time. There's also a bit of a renaissance going on in the EU with 1P-LSD, 1V-LSD, 1cP-LSD, etc. The chemist responsible was recently interviewed and basically says they have a new substituted analogue ready to hit the market as soon as whatever they're currently selling is banned! German video but interview with the chemist is in English: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=iVNCt2zyIaQ https://yewtu.be/watch?v=iVNCt2zyIaQ
- feintruled 4y agoReminds me of one of my favourite Onion articles: https://www.theonion.com/new-wonder-drug-enables-users-to-get-higher-than-hell-1819564733 https://www.theonion.com/new-wonder-drug-enables-users-to-ge... 'On Monday, Sloan Laboratories, a subsidiary of the Wilmington-based Merton Pharmaceuticals, unveiled Dexiflux-V, a new miracle drug its creators claim will enable users to get "high as a fucking kite."'
- DontchaKnowit 4y agoYou van get this stuff online. I used to take ket analogs and pcp derivatives all the time. DCK and HO-PCE were staples in my dorm in college. I will probably end up with some bizarre form of cancer due to taking large quantities of these drugs with little history of human usage
- Jerrrry 4y agoMethoxetamine and 3-MEO-PCP and all the weird stuff in between! Due to the well-established metabolic processes these go through, it is very unlikely to see any side effects outside of acute, high doses, such as Ket and bladder issues. Crazy to think it took a constitutional amendment to repeal the prohibition of alcohol, but in 2013, little uproar as the Federal Analogues act essentially made all drugs with any desirable properties, de facto illegal.
- DontchaKnowit 4y agoYeah that act didn't really do a lot though, can can still get this stuff on the clear net with very little risk of getting caught, and if you get caught? Little risk of prosecution
- virtualritz 4y agoAround the corner from where I live in Berlin there is a store[1] that legaly sells LSD analogs. They also run a web shop[2]. It sold 1cP-LSD until summer 2021 (outlawed in July 2021, AFAIR), switched to 1V-LSD until that was outlawed by the government this September and is now selling 1D-LSD which, along BOL-148, is the last known LSD alike/derivative that is not outlawed in Germany (yet) AFAIK[3]. My guess would be that once those latter two get outlawed they may pay someone to find them a new variant ... [1] https://goo.gl/maps/NDGuYNTSyE5ozAcv6 https://goo.gl/maps/NDGuYNTSyE5ozAcv6 [2] https://www.lsd.shop https://www.lsd.shop [3] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_von_LSD-Analoga#Rechtlicher_Status https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_von_LSD-Analoga#Rechtlic...
- 1MachineElf 4y agoI need to travel to Berlin soon.
- seppel 4y agoNote that before 1cp-LSD there was 1p-LSD. My impression was that 1cp-LSD, 1v-LSD, and 1d-LSD was published precisely the moment the previous *-LSD was banned. So it is quite likely that somebody already has a successor of 1d-LSD in his drawer. What I find quite interesting is that Germany seems unable or unwillig to ban all *-LSD formulae. They are able to ban structural groups, but for LSD it is always quite specific when the new law is published. As if somebody is interested in keeping LSD access open.
- gpcr1949 4y agoBOL-148 is not like the others. All others are N1-acyl analogs of LSD, so unlike bol148 they rapidly metabolize to LSD proper. This also means until they make a prodrug or analog law, it will be easy to keep on thinking of new LSD prodrugs. Here are a few free ones that will certainly work, no payment to me required: isovaleroyl, cyclobutanecarbonyl, oxetanecarbonyl(both isomers), cyclopropylacetyl.
- atlacatl_sv 4y agoIt's very similar to an unidentified drug in Honduras, I wonder if it's the same organization creating them and distributing them in different places. 'Tiburón or “Shark” is a chemically-altered weed that is said to be more addictive than cocaine and sells like hotcakes.' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZhxFtmAoXg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZhxFtmAoXg
- c7b 4y ago> We still don’t know its full effects, but thanks to understanding its chemical composition, we have a better idea of what we’re dealing with. That's the small grudge I have with chemistry, especially organic - yes, it's the basis of life, but the discipline seems more like a catalogue of observations than a theory that would allow us to make deductions.
- dotancohen 4y ago> the discipline seems more like a catalogue of observations than a theory That is exactly what it is. Just like e.g. Ohm's law is based on observation and not theory, and archeology, and psychology, and medicine, and physics, and almost every other field outside mathematics. Some of those fields have developed theories to explain the observations, yet even those theories are constantly being refined. This is why CS was a branch of mathematics for so long.
- c7b 4y agoElectromagnetism, to take your example, is very much a theory that we can use to make predictions about a new system once we can write down its description. Yes, we sometimes make new discoveries and we have to develop new theories for those (like when we discovered that electricity and magnetism are governed by the same force), but that doesn't mean that for every new circuit layout we have start afresh by collecting data. We can apply the theory to the description and get a reasonable prediction. And that's what feels different about organic compounds. We already have the formula, but we still can't deduce much from it.
- anonym29 4y agoYOLO - where can I get some?
- jfengel 4y agoThe story is much more interesting than the misleading headline. It's "discovered" in the sense that somebody is making and importing it, but nobody in Australia has seen it before. So they go into the details of what kind of chemistry goes on with an unidentified powder.
- dang 4y agoOk, we replaced "new" with "unidentified" in the title above. Thanks! If someone has a better title suggestion, we can change it again.
- refurb 4y agoThe DEA used to publish a monthly newsletter called Microgram which profiled interesting work coming out of their analytical labs. Super interesting to read, but it's now behind some firewall for law enforcement only. They also have a journal called Microgram where they publish scientific papers on forensic chemistry. https://www.dea.gov/documents/2018/2018-01/2018-01-01/synthesis-and-characterization-benzoylfentanyl-and https://www.dea.gov/documents/2018/2018-01/2018-01-01/synthe...
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y agoWhat did you find to be misleading about the headline? I'm only asking because it made me think of a black-market-sold drug ("illicit drug") that was recently encountered and recognized as distinctly different ("new"; "has been discovered") from other current-market drugs, which seems to match the description you gave of the article.
- im3w1l 4y agoHow likely is it that someone tried to make fluorexetamine and messed up vs intentionally putting the F in a different spot?
- gpcr1949 4y agoPretty unlikely. The F would be already in place at an early stage, the precursor is probably 2-F-benzonitrile, alternatively 2-f-phenylmagnesium bromide.
- undoware 4y ago"fluor" is not a morpheme I enjoy seeing in a chemical name; this seems possibly quite toxic? (I am not a chemist)
- girvo 4y agoFlourine/halogenated alkaloids in general like these may be toxic, but it's not because of the flourine. The halogens are used because they form very strong bonds in those positions (among other reasons)
- gpcr1949 4y agoFluorine on an aromatic ring is not labile: other examples of substances with fluorinated aromatic rings are fluoxetine(prozac), citalopram (celexa) and paroxetine (paxil), which are antidepressants many people are taking daily without fluorine-related toxicity
- gpcr1949 4y agoWith all due respect for the forensic chemists and their good work on identifying an unknown substance, it is fairly common for forensic groups to once in a while detect new chemical analogs of known drugs. A few years back, lots of new cannabinoids and cathinones were getting released constantly as older analogs were getting banned. Often, these novel analogs are pharmacological low hanging fruit. The drug in this article is also such low-hanging fruit: it is well known an N-methyl to N-ethyl substitution does not lead to reduced activity in this category of arylcyclohexylamine dissociative anesthetics (this was actually one of the SAR considerations taken by the designers of methoxetamine!). And indeed, this very same substitution was used here on 2-Fluorodeschloroketamine, leading to the drug from the article. PS the Chinese abbreviation for "CanKet", 2F-NENDCK, most likely stands for 2-fluoro-N-ethyl-nordeschloroketamine. It is almost certain this drug was synthesized by a Chinese custom synthesis group (the most typical source for these type of substances at scale) and not by Australian clandestine chemists.
- girvo 4y agoIndeed. Though as a semi-related aside, Canberra recently had some stats put out where quite literally less that 50% of "ketamine" tested was actually ketamine, most of the street ketamine out here now are these research chemical analogs.
- tsol 4y ago>It is almost certain this drug was synthesized by a Chinese custom synthesis group (the most typical source for these type of substances at scale) and not by Australian clandestine chemists. Most people don't realize this, but you can order a synthesis of just about any (legal) chemical with enough money. People do it for pharmaceutical or nootropic drugs sometimes in group buys. It's trivial if you have enough money to find some vaguely legal analog of a recreational drug, and order a synthesis of it. 2f-dck is a ketamine analog that I believe is still legal and reported to be very similar in effect, and I'd guess 2f-nendck is somewhat similar to that. Not that I'm suggesting anyone should, there are risks and it's not an easy process. It's just interesting how easily accessible it is if you have the right information.
- 4y ago