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The main thing about P2P meth is that there's so much of it (2021)
- f33d5173 5mo agoTried clicking the fivethirtyeight link halfway down the article, and was immediately reminded of what abc decided to start doing today. What an asshole move.
- School-Cotton 5mo agoWhat are you referring to?
- asdff 5mo agoABC deleted all the old 538 archives and refused to entertain selling the IP back to Nate Silver and prefer to let it die.
- soupfordummies 5mo agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48152553 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48152553
- SV_BubbleTime 5mo agoFantastic write up. I think the biggest takeaway for me is just how insanely ineffective banning pseudoephedrine over the counter was. Price went down, usage went up overdose went up, seizures went up, the production just changed quickly and there wasn’t even a blip. Billions of uses of bullshit decongestant products that didn’t work at all… and to get the good stuff you still need to buy it from behind the counter and give ID.
- boldlybold 5mo agoThat's all correct, and nobody seems to care. Nobody is ever going to improve the system, and us law abiding citizens are left with the consequences.
- nerdsniper 5mo agoThe other day I needed pseudoephedrine, so I asked for one box of instant tablets and one box of extended release capsules. The store said they’re only allowed to sell me one box so I had to choose. I’m so glad these policies made it so meth isn’t super easy to find anymore. Oh wait, meth is still dirt cheap fucking everywhere, but now I also can’t get effective cold medicine either. Can we please just admit this policy doesn’t have any effect on the meth supply curve and please put pseudoephedrine back in Dayquil?
- 15155 5mo agohttps://improbable.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Pseudoephedrine.pdf https://improbable.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Pseudoephe...
- nerdsniper 5mo agoAhahhaha thank you for this, absolutely hilarious.
- BenjiWiebe 5mo agoSometime when you don't need it, pick up a box of whichever kind of sudafed you need to have a stock of both extended/regular.
- LocalH 5mo agoHuman society has a massive issue with blindness towards n-order effects (they barely consider second-order effects, never mind thinking further out)
- meowkit 5mo agoI don't think its innate though - most people I've met can think of higher order consequences or at least understand them. The real issue is actually measuring results. I think we have to design society to factor higher order effects in. That means a fundamentally new approach to things like voting and tracking accountability. Is it even possible? Who knows. Sometimes I think our problems have outstripped individual life spans which makes them intractable.
- fc417fc802 5mo agoPeople only see them when they're being objective. My impression is that most people spend most of their time worrying about social status and engaging in tribalism meaning society on the whole is either blind to them or more likely will make up an answer that suits them.
- kevinsync 5mo agoThrowback to A Simple and Convenient Synthesis of Pseudoephedrine From N-Methylamphetamine [0] [1], a 2012 paper describing how to synthesize Sudafed from meth lol [0] https://improbable.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Pseudoephedrine.pdf https://improbable.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Pseudoephe... [1] https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/pseudephedrine-made-easy-kind https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/pseudephedrine-mad...
- Aurornis 5mo ago> banning pseudoephedrine over the counter was. In many states it wasn’t banned. It just moved behind the counter and you could only by a limited amount per month. Which was actually fantastically good for those of us who actually need it, because this made it available again instead of the empty shelves.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- 15155 5mo ago> insanely ineffective banning pseudoephedrine Limiting pseudoephedrine need not have effect on overall quantity to have huge positive societal effects. More P2P in industrial laboratories means less DIY Birch reductions in a soda bottle.
- RajT88 5mo agoThe insane thing for me is seeing how tightly meth purity correlated with the airing of Breaking Bad.
- milesvp 5mo agoI was thinking the same thing, though I couldn't remember the timeline. Makes me wonder if there was something already in the zeitgeist, or if it was fueled by the obsession with purity in the series. I could totally see Breaking Bad causing chemists to want to up their game, or causing chemists to get clowned for having low purity.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- trhway 5mo agoyes, while the show probably popularized the idea of purity for meth, in general strict prohibition leads to increase in purity and potency. We've recently seen that with heroin/fentanyl. There is probably still no "fentanyl of meth", and thus so far only purity increase. Once a more potent, fentanyl-like, meth appears, it will probably similarly get into and displace a lot of classic meth trade.
- whimsicalism 5mo agoWhat? Prohibition historically showed the exact opposite. I suspect higher purity & potency of street drugs has much more to do with more sophisticated operators operating outside of the US than strict prohibition. Same with fentanyl.
- KarlKode 5mo agoI believe OP wanted to make the point that one of the most important things for people profiting from the illegal sale of drugs (meth or heroin/opiates) is to minimize the amount that has to be trafficked (1kg of 10% meth vs 100g of pure meth or 1kg of heroin vs 10g of fentanyl). I believe this explanation is too simplistic...
- s5300 5mo ago[dead]
- newsclues 5mo ago[flagged]
- trhway 5mo ago>He points out that “old” meth was made from ephedrine and that “new” meth is made from a chemical called Phenylacetone or P2P the new is just the old that came back. The old meth, "biker meth", was P2P. Then was ephedrine, and with a crackdown on ephedrine - back to P2P. Another noticeable thing - the recent shortage of ADHD medication while supposedly illegal meth production has been growing. Demand is present in both cases while the capitalism model of responding with supply seems to work very well only in one.
- arcfour 5mo agoIn the former case, you have government artificially suppressing supply and acting to dissuade pharmacies from keeping almost any extra stock, which is unfortunate.
- Aurornis 5mo ago> Another noticeable thing - the recent shortage of ADHD medication while supposedly illegal meth production has been growing. Demand is present in both cases while the capitalism model of responding with supply seems to work very well only in one. Capitalism isn’t the problem at all with prescription medications. The annual production amounts are regulated by the government. There has been an explosion in demand for ADHD prescriptions between the way it’s trending on social media and the recent shifts in how easily prescriptions are handed out. I don’t agree that inducing artificial supply shortages is the right way to regulate it, but there is no “capitalism bad” story here. If anything this is a good example of how central command and control of production doesn’t work.
- sidewndr46 5mo agoIs there really a shortage of ADHD medications? As in we cannot synthesize and distribute them?
- keepamovin 5mo agoThe ephedrine (or pseudoephedrine) synthesis is a one step using phosphorus/iodine reduction directly to methamphetamine. It’s simple and clean in that only an acid base extraction is required, and only one set of NP solvents. All these others syntheses with multiple steps up the chances of weird toxic solvents or contaminants creeping in. I think it’s a contaminant issue that’s exacerbated by the drug use. The government should just regulate it, control purity and production and let people access small amounts for recreation/performance. It’s not an evil drug per se - long history before it was criminalized. Plus that would neuter the cartels and protect people’s health more than pushing it underground.
- therobots927 5mo ago[flagged]
- fwipsy 5mo agoExtraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. "Go read this book" ain't it.
- jrflowers 5mo ago“I don’t feel like reading a book” isn’t a counter argument. That’s just a tidbit about how your day is going
- nswango 5mo ago[dead]
- fwipsy 5mo agoI've not refuted anything, but I still don't believe it. I'm just informing them of that.
- jrflowers 5mo agoI think gp might’ve suggested the book because they weren’t expecting the claim to be accepted out of hand. I’m not convinced either, the book looks interesting though. I might watch the hbo adaptation whenever that comes out ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/fort-bragg-cartel-murders-1235394302/ https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/fort-b...
- serf 5mo ago>..What evidence is there that these have a chemical difference? 3 lines later.. >.. The Drug Enforcement Agency tests the meth they seize to see how it was made. quick answer!
- zephen 5mo agoRight? One suspects that "knowing how it was made" implies "understanding contaminants to look for."
- hx8 5mo agoThere's multiple avenues for gaining knowledge about manufacturing processes. One path is certainly examining the sample, which is largely discussed in the article by looking at ratios of isomers. There would be other key indicators to look for in an examination. We have no lack of sample material, gathered everyone on the supply chain from border seizure to end-user busts. Another path to "knowing how it was made" is examining the manufacturing facilities. I think LE has some understanding of the flow of precursor into foreign manufacturing facilities, and this has become a common hot topic issue in international trade.
- zephen 5mo ago> One path is certainly examining the sample, which is largely discussed in the article by looking at ratios of isomers. The trend is for the unwanted L-isomer to be mostly eliminated. That doesn't really let you know the process. Other chemical markers are used for this: "Reductive amination remains the preferred synthetic manufacturing route for methamphetamine with 98.4% of the MPP samples analyzed profiled as originating from a P2P precursor. Approximately 9% (n=62) of these P2P-based samples showed evidence of being synthesized to methamphetamine under Leuckart conditions. This process uses methylamine and formic acid or N-methylformamide as supporting chemicals. This percentage is a slight increase compared to CY 2022 seizures (~6%). In addition, the MPP has been monitoring the Mercury Amalgam sub-classification with approximately 2% of seizures (n=14) observed to have been synthesized under these conditions and an additional 1% (n=7) of sample profiles showing markers for both Leuckart and Mercury Amalgam reactions, indicating the mixing of finished products at some point during the postproduction process." (from https://www.dea.gov/sites/default/files/2025-09/CY%202023%20Methamphetamine%20Annual%20Report%20PRB%202024-35.pdf https://www.dea.gov/sites/default/files/2025-09/CY%202023%20...) > Another path to "knowing how it was made" is examining the manufacturing facilities. That's obviously not always possible. But the entire point of the discussion above is that law enforcement has a lot of samples and tests a lot of samples, so they are in a good position to understand what has changed. Markers they found include formic acid and mercury. Neither of those would be particularly good for you to inhale.
- jongjong 5mo agoP2P stands for Peer-to-Peer. Now I can't say that I led a P2P network anymore.
- Centigonal 5mo agoATM I'm at the MTB ATM, withdrawing cash to buy an MTB, the tires of which I will fill to 1.7 ATM.
- zephen 5mo agoThe article was doing so well until the conclusion. > Does this rule out the idea of contaminants? No. Even if it’s 97% pure d-meth, there could be something very nasty lurking in that last 3%. But I don’t see the need for such an explanation. We know there are many more heavy users, so there’s no need to go beyond the idea that quantity has a quality all its own. It's fine if the author finds it an uninteresting problem because the probable answer is staring us in the face, but still, he only has a plausible hypothesis. If Sam Quinones is correct in that there is a fundamental difference in meth then and now that is causing major issues for addicts, it would certainly be in society's interest to figure that out and rectify it.
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- cybercatgurrl 5mo agorectify it how? the only thing society is really good at with regards to drugs is prohibition. you can’t impose regulations on an unregulated market
- zephen 5mo ago> the only thing society is really good at with regards to drugs is prohibition. Really? Seems to me that, in general, we suck at it.
- bbor 5mo agoIt does feel like that sometimes, but alcohol use plummeted during US prohibition.
- ulrikrasmussen 5mo agoInitially, yes. But as illicit supply chains were established, usage crept back up. It didn't go all the way up to pre-prohibition usage, but it got pretty close. Just look at the graph in Figure 1 in this article: https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa157.pdf https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa157.pdf
- robotbikes 5mo agoAnd I thought for a second they were talking about peer to peer meth but no that's what the DEA shut down by tightly controlling pseudoephedrine, where before meth using meth makers were making meth and distributing it. It certainly seems like prohibition is just making things worse and making it more lucrative for the least ethical of black market producers. Similar situation with fentanyl when compared to previous opiates.
- cortesoft 5mo agoI thought it was going to be metaphor about exploiting a peer to peer network
- loeg 5mo ago> that's what the DEA shut down by tightly controlling pseudoephedrine, where before meth using meth makers were making meth and distributing it. Phosphorus-ephedrine meth, aka shake-and-bake. > It certainly seems like prohibition is just making things worse and making it more lucrative for the least ethical of black market producers. I don't think P2P meth is any worse than what came before it. Prohibition is making things somewhat worse here for legal access to pseudoephedrine, though.
- Computer0 5mo agoAlmost like the war on drugs is making my community a WORSE place to live!!!
- keepamovin 5mo agoHa, funny. I thought it must be “p2p mesh” network architecture at first, then checked the comments and was like “oh p2p distributed meth?” Like you, hahaha
- jchip303 5mo ago[dead]
- sciencejerk 5mo agoThe article links the Rhodium site archive, which hosts recipes and chemistry lab setup for making P2P precursor and the real stuff
- dang 5mo agoDiscussed at the time: The main thing about Phenylacetone meth is that there's so much of it - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29027284 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29027284 - Oct 2021 (359 comments)
- ptrl600 5mo agoEphedrine isn't banned, not even behind a prescription, there's just rather strict limits on how much you can buy a month. I take a Bronkaid every morning with my coffee.
- fc417fc802 5mo agoI have to ask, why are you consuming (pseudo?)ephedrine every morning?
- ptrl600 5mo agoLosing 5 pounds a month, 20 down and 10 to go.
- fc417fc802 5mo agoDo I understand correctly that you're using it as an appetite suppressant? How effective has it been for you? Particularly considering that you're already drinking coffee and I would have expected caffeine to have the stronger effect there. Also out of curiosity why not go with one of the new peptides?
- ptrl600 5mo agoWorks well enough that 1800 cals a day satiates. Caffeine on its own doesn't cut it. I'm scared of intestinal motility sides from GLPs.
- sidewndr46 5mo agoIt varies quite wildly according to individual it would seem. Some people take it no issue. I generally avoid pseudoephedrine because it is a noticeable stimulant for me.
- nonameiguess 5mo agoEphedrine is a far stronger appetite suppressant than caffeine. It only has a six-hour half life, though. The classic bodybuilder ECA stack was typically taken every four hours, but I suppose it's quite a bit harder to get to 4% bodyfat than it is just to not be overweight.
- 33MHz-i486 5mo agothe problems with the meth epidemic are 3 fold. two problems are intrinsic to meth and one is a matter of public policy. 1) meth is highly addictive and there is no pharmacological intervention for that addiction. there is no clinically effective therapeutic treatment for it either 2) meth is neurodegenerative. heavy users end up with a permanent disability 3) at some point around 2010 a bunch of cities decided it was totally cool if dealing and public use were normalized/decriminalized in areas their most vulnerable populations hang out. (3) is an incredibly stupid and expensive policy given (1) and (2)
- bityard 5mo agoSmall towns in North America are are being decimated by meth. The drug dealers move in because there are no drug task forces, just underfunded and ill-equipped sheriffs and local police. My wife and I live in the suburbs now but grew up in a very rural community. Last year we went to a wedding there. It was shocking how many people under the age of 50 were missing half their teeth.
- chadgpt3 5mo agoIs it the government's job to enforce people's teeth? I presume you also observed something worse than that but chose not to write about it?
- aoeusnth1 5mo agoI believe they were using their teeth (or lack thereof) to reference their visible meth addiction. See GP, "2) meth is neurodegenerative. heavy users end up with a permanent disability."
- chadgpt3 5mo agoYeah but if teeth are the worst of it, that's not really the government's problem. The government doesn't prohibit alcohol to prevent liver damage and that's worse than tooth damage. If teeth aren't the worst of it, what was the worst of it?
- idxoutofbounds 5mo ago> Ephedrine meth was like a party drug. […] You could normally kind of more or less hang onto your life. You had a house, you had a job. […] P2P meth was nothing like that. It was a very sinister drug. It brought you inside. You didn’t want to be around other people. You wanted to just kind of be alone with whatever bizarre thoughts your mind was now cooking up, and conspiracies. That sounds a lot like the progression of many stimulant addictions.
- justonceokay 5mo agoIn the gay community it brings groups of guys into a mutual spiral of addiction and weirdly long sexual practices. They feel like they’re having the best time at first until they are isolated and completely chemically addicted. I’ve lost a friend and many acquaintances this way. All it takes is one party where your friends “molly” is not so pure and you’re high for 18 hours straight. “Let’s do that again next week” turns into “all weekend” turns into “all the time”
- tanseydavid 5mo ago> That sounds a lot like the progression of many stimulant addictions. Precisely.
- dvh 5mo agoWas "Interstate 60" scenario every seriously considered for dealing with drug use problems? I think it could make both parties happy, drug users would disappear from cities and they would have unlimited amount of drugs in their utopia.
- fc417fc802 5mo agoThe US in general would probably benefit greatly from delineating regions and having different sets of laws. The resulting ability to self segregate according to ideology would presumably reduce political conflict. We could call the regions "states" and enshrine their right to self government in the constitution. You know, to make sure the federal government doesn't end up trampling on it at some point in the far future.
- himata4113 5mo agoHappy to see that meth is becoming more affortable, maybe inflation isn't so bad after all if we consider all the things we have access to and that have come down in price since few decades ago. /s
- justonceokay 5mo agoInflation getting you down? Combat it with meth, so you can Cram More Time into Each Second (TM).
- that_lurker 5mo agoIs the P2P meth E2E
- cboyardee 5mo ago[dead]
- gocartStatue 5mo agoOr maybe, just maybe, abusing even pure, pharma-grade meth causes schizophrenia.
- Arch485 5mo agoHonestly, that was sort of the impression I got. It's not that the meth is contaminated, it's that the meth is way stronger and more pure. I wouldn't be surprised if incredibly high doses of any stimulant causes schizophrenia.
- LoganDark 5mo agod-meth being the desirable one (leaving l-meth undesirable) matches up with my anecdotal experience with adderall, which is approximately equal parts d-amphetamine and l-amphetamine -- it's not quite methamphetamine, but it's closely related. I was given some by prescription for ADHD, and when I first tried it, it completely destroyed me for some reason -- I could not seem to get myself out of bed to eat (or do much of anything), even when I was very hungry. I ended up having to sleep it off, because being awake for that was very distressing -- not only did it not help me, but it seemed it had caused me even greater executive dysfunction. When I brought this up at my next appointment, I was prescribed pure d-amph to try next. This actually helped me a lot, and continues to help me to this day. I can only guess that the l-amph was the problem with the adderall that day. While my body seems to also have issues with different brands of d-amph, they're more like heart issues rather than executive function issues.
- hackerbrother 5mo ago“Old school biker meth” - Hank Schrader
- nodesocket 5mo agoHeisenberg lives? The king of P2P with 99% purity.
- IAmGraydon 5mo agoThis article explores whether P2P meth is more likely to cause schizophrenia than Ephedrine meth and does so in a very methodical and data - driven manner. However, the very basis of all of this is non existent. He presents zero evidence that meth users now have a higher rate of schizophrenia and only refers to an anecdotal statement by one guy. Seems like a lot of effort to go through before even exploring if the claim is legitimate.
- spurls 5mo agoThere is a correlation between P2P meth and increased occurrences of meth psychosis that should be studied. It's a pretty consistent phenomenon
- dzonga 5mo agoeven the high potent weed being sold these days.
- coder0x 5mo ago[flagged]
- jimcollinswort1 5mo agoVery enjoyable and informative site, kudos to the author on many good posts. A nice discovery
- spwa4 5mo agoThis article unintentionally illustrates why chatgpt/gemini guardrails totally fail: it will happily explain you synthesis steps.