
The drug revolution that no one can stop - r721
https://medium.com/matter-archive/the-drug-revolution-that-no-one-can-stop-19f753fb15e0
======
benbreen
"Technology and drugs have always existed in an easy symbiosis: the first
thing ever bought and sold across the Internet was a bag of marijuana. In 1971
or 1972, students at Stanford University’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
used ARPANET—the earliest iteration of the Internet—to arrange a marijuana
deal with their counterparts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology."

This is fantastic. Anyone know of an article that delves into this more?
Assuming it's true, I'm surprised it isn't more widely known.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
I was very surprised too and just found this:

[http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/the-first-thing-to-be-
bough...](http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/the-first-thing-to-be-bought-and-
sold-on-the-internet-was-some-weed)

Apparently the anecdote is from this book:

[http://www.amazon.co.uk/What-Dormouse-Said-Counterculture-
Pe...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/What-Dormouse-Said-Counterculture-
Personal/dp/0143036769)

------
jpatokal
And these shenanigans, too, would be entirely unnecessary if _known_ drugs
were legal and regulated, and people could take controlled risks instead of
playing Russian roulette with newly synthesized drugs.

~~~
paulhauggis
Cigarette companies are still being sued to this day for causing cancer in
users. There were public, social, campaigns saying that these companies were
evil for knowing the effects of their product..yet still selling them to
consumers that knew the risks (I'm taking in the last 20 years or so).

The same thing is starting to happen to the fast-food companies like
Mcdonalds. They are starting to take the blame for a person's free choice to
consume their unhealthy food.

How can a company (or government) possible allow the legalized consumption of
something like Cocaine/heroin/Meth? Will there be tort reform so a company
can't be sued for deaths or addiction?

Until we have a little more personal responsibility, I don't think illegal
drugs should be legalized. It's even apparent in your comment:

"And these shenanigans, too, would be entirely unnecessary if known drugs were
legal and regulated, and people could take controlled risks instead of playing
Russian roulette with newly synthesized drugs."

It's your personal choice to play roulette with drugs. They aren't required to
live and the ones you are talking about have almost no health benefits (we
aren't talking about weed here). Yet, you someone blame the government for
forcing a person to make this choice. Complete and utter bullshit.

We see big companies frequently taking part in tax avoidance by going
overseas. Should we also blame the US government for having taxes that are too
high? It's the same logic you are using.

~~~
ekianjo
> It's your personal choice to play roulette with drugs. They aren't required
> to live and the ones you are talking about have almost no health benefits
> (we aren't talking about weed here). Yet, you someone blame the government
> for forcing a person to make this choice. Complete and utter bullshit.

No matter if you forbid it or not people will want to take drugs. The
government can either forbid it and cause the raging war on drugs that claims
lives, leads to the development of underground mafia organizations, or choose
to regulate it and make profit from it while keeping the prices reasonable and
under tight control in terms of quality and supply.

Your tax money going to the war on drugs has been proven to be completely
useless so far, so I can see the benefit of the other point of view.

------
scythe
MXE wasn't designed at random; it was the chosen winner of a long series of
tested compounds made by a chemist who had no other way to treat his phantom
limb pain. We have a huge thread at bluelight of people's ideas for chemicals
that might get you high, but the first thing you'll notice is that basically
all of those ideas are infeasible:

[http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads/582708-I-like-to-draw-
pi...](http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads/582708-I-like-to-draw-pictures-of-
random-molecules)

The degree of effort to which people will go to satisfy their curiosity is
sort of astounding. There seems to be an endless array of possibilities. The
thing is, people who have some understanding are always trying to direct
attention to structures that won't cause grievous physical harm, stuff we
understand, and so it is usually these that get popular -- there's a reason
that synthetic cannabinoids have fluoropentyl chains on the indole nitrogen
instead of fluorobutyl chains, and it's because the latter will tear your
mitochondria to shreds (fluoroacetate). Unfortunately, as more stuff gets
banned, we stray further and further from the beaten path -- methylone was
pretty similar to MDMA, but we know a lot less about 6-APB, and whatever comes
next will probably be even stranger. Every now and then the predictions fail
and something nasty like 5-API shows up on the market and people die, and we
don't know what to do about that because there will always be effects we can't
predict. Even as we do our best to recommend the things we think are _safer_ ,
we inevitably shuttle those off the pipeline into prohibition and rush forth
to the next scary-looking arylalkylamine.

It's a mess. Most people in the harm reduction community want legalization,
but none of us wants this. We actually have plenty of drugs that have a
history of use and no reported deaths (mephedrone, 2C-B), but of course those
got banned, anything that becomes popular gets banned, even if it appears to
be safe (Al-LAD on the chopping block) and we go back into the dark again,
waiting for the tide of profiteering to carve a new vista out of the world's
insatiable demand for something more entertaining than football.

~~~
llamataboot
Interesting interview with the synthesizer of MXE here:

[http://www.vice.com/read/interview-with-ketamine-
chemist-704...](http://www.vice.com/read/interview-with-ketamine-
chemist-704-v18n2)

------
guard-of-terra
Custom drugs are all rage in Russia. Chinese plants make synthetic cannabioids
with varying formulas which then happen to be not made illegal yet.

Those are moved into country, mixed with all kinds of chemical shit and sold
as "курительные смеси" \- mixes for smoking.

This fall dozens of people died from these nasty chemicals, usually in packs
in one city or another. There was a law passed which makes all that stuff
illegal but I'm not sure if it will pan out.

Why they proliferated so badly? I guess because the local market of
[relatively] light drugs is underserved in general. For example, I happen to
not have ever come in contact with weed and don't know a single person who can
get some. But pretty sure there are a lot of advertisements like "курительные
смеси 8 9XX XXX XX XX" mask-painted on pavements all around the city.

~~~
NicoJuicy
I actually read about a terrifying drug made by cheap materials in Russia
(easy to self create) named Crocodile... Skin gets eaten and it's very
horrifying to see long term users, carefull not for the weak of heart :s
[http://goo.gl/wiAXNx](http://goo.gl/wiAXNx)

~~~
poizan42
That's just impure desomorphine though

~~~
girvo
I truly don't understand how desomorphine can be created through the RP/I
route. It makes pretty much zero sense based on my chemistry knowledge (BSci
in Chemistry, but didn't complete it, dropped out third year). I've no idea
what they're actually injecting, but I do know that a lot of the photos a
number of years ago that were tagged as "Krokodil" were in fact a different
drug entirely

~~~
refurb
RP/I2 is basically a source of hydrogen iodide (HI).

If you look at desomorphine, it's just a morphine molecule without the bottom
hydroxyl group and the double bond reduced.

HI will reductively deoxygenate benzyl alcohols. The oxygen removed in
morphine is an allyic alcohol which is in conjugation with the aromatic ring,
so it has "benzyl alcohol-like properties". HI will also reduce the double
bond.

As for the reaction mechanism, I'm not sure anyone has completely figured it
out. One could suggest protonation of the hydroxyl group, elimination of water
to form the carbocation, addition of the iodide ion(-). Another iodide ion
then attacks the iodine on the molecule, which creates I2 and leaves a
benzylic anion which is protonated by HI. Here is a good mechanism diagram
[1].

[1][http://www.beilstein-
journals.org/bjoc/content/inline/1860-5...](http://www.beilstein-
journals.org/bjoc/content/inline/1860-5397-8-36-i1.png?scale=2.0&max-
width=1024&background=FFFFFF)

~~~
girvo
I had something much larger typed up, but I'll be honest, it's been a number
of years since I studied and my chemistry is a bit rusty. From what I seem to
remember, I would've thought the apomorphine rearrangement would be more
likely to prevail in the conditions given from a RP/I2 reaction, but I'm
possibly completely off-base now (see above: rusty!).

I'd be super curious to see whether anyone has properly analysed what comes
out of that reaction, and what those addicts are putting into their veins
(aside from horrendous toxic byproducts). The reaction method makes some
sense, but reactions with opiates are typically finicky, so I've always been
skeptical of these reports. I'd expect desomorphine to be present, yes, but in
trace amounts at best (along with morphine and other byproducts)!

------
jrapdx3
This article fits in with another thread here earlier today where I commented
about using any drug entails some finite risk of bad effects. The apparently
common belief that "designer drugs" shouldn't be "illegal" is certainly not
supported by the article.

I'm not sure what makes it so hard for some people to grasp the intrinsic
dangers of ingesting "designer" drugs. Our physiology is complex and quirky,
rendering all drugs capable of unpredictably causing serious side effects. And
even if that's a rare event, in the case of barely (or not at all) studied
compounds, it's still like playing pistol roulette with live rounds.

There's risk for the chemist too. While we might admire the skill to design
and synthesize a novel compound, it's foolish to do so outside of a fully
equipped and qualified lab to assure safety for the chemist as well as the
environment. Of course, working in such a lab would no doubt imply a level of
scrutiny about what the chemist is trying to do.

So obviously a designer drug is likely to be produced in conditions that don't
favor purity and careful testing. It's no wonder there are tragic outcomes,
but it seems human nature to try to do something "against the rules". But it's
an entirely different matter when rules are the "laws" of legislatures vs. the
laws of Mother Nature. She never cares what we "believe" or desire.

Designer drugs will continue to be a problem. The best we can hope for is that
bad outcomes will yield here and there a clue to something useful. It's a
shame, seems so often we have to learn the hard way.

~~~
barrkel
_I commented about using any drug entails some finite risk of bad effects. The
apparently common belief that "designer drugs" shouldn't be "illegal" is
certainly not supported by the article._

I can see your line of thinking: X has risks, X should not be done, thus make
X illegal and X will not be done and the risk will no longer exist.

But that's not the way the world works. Making X illegal does not prevent X
being done. Instead, it creates incentives try and find people doing X and put
them through the criminal system. That introduces a whole separate set of
risks. And making X illegal reduces the probability that problems created by X
will be treated in time. Another set of risks. Etc.

The question you should be asking is: are the risks of X greater than the
risks of making X illegal?

~~~
bigiain
There's also the unspoken "X has risks, and I don't want to do X, therefore X
should be illegal".

I ride motorcycles. I have friends and family involved in scuba diving,
paragliding, football, rock climbing, hell - even horse riding.

_All_ of those activities have "well known risks of serious injury or death"
associated with them, and each of them I've heard recent stories of death in
the extended circles of my family and friends.

I'm not sure whether the "designer drug" risk is anything like as high as some
of those legal and "acceptable for your children" risks.

My approach is less "asking are the risks of X greater than the risks of
making X illegal?", but closer to "Quantify the risks of X, work out which can
be mitigated or reduced without needing to ban X, make sure participants are
informed of the risks, and if needed ensure training/insurance/licencing is
available if required".

Thirty thousand people a year are killed in motor vehicle accidents in the
USA. We don't react by saying "Make cars illegal" \- we manage, mitigate,
reduce the risks (quite successfully, that 30k is down from 40k 10 years ago,
and over 50k back in '79 and '80) - then we declare 30 thousand dead people a
year an "acceptable cost" for the benefits of private car ownership.

Why aren't we able to be that rational about "designer drugs"?

~~~
jrapdx3
I have one friend in his late 60's who just bought a new motorcycle. His wife
was displeased with his decision though _might_ be tempted to ride along
sometimes. Another friend decided to _stop_ riding a few years back because he
felt it was too risky for him to continue.

Point is with motorcycles, cars, scuba, yes, even horses, the risks are more
or less known and probability of various outcomes, including harm, can be
reasoned about.

With drugs the estimation of probable outcomes is orders of magnitude more
difficult to compute. To say it again, all drugs have _numerous effects_ which
vary greatly among recipients, and even for established agents _most drug
effects have received little or no study_. However we do have a systematic
track record of the AEs encountered, and after millions of cases we have a
pretty good idea of how to use the agent safely.

Legal status notwithstanding, a drug with potent enough effects to be
interesting is asymptotically guaranteed to have adverse effects in some
members of the population of potential users. It means effects of a new and
arcane product are no more than a total crap shoot.

Since even low frequencies of AEs may disqualify a drug as "safe", regulatory
bodies require testing sufficiently large number of subjects under tightly
controlled conditions to show evidence that it's safe enough to justify its
proposed uses.

Without such study it is impossible to evaluate the use of an unvetted drug in
the same way as riding a motorcycle. The information about benefits and risks
is just not known. There is simply no basis for making a rational decision.

As a clinician and scientist questions of prohibition are largely beside the
point. People will continue to do stupid things laws aside. However,
laws/rules exist as a benchmark, and optimally serve as a statement of our
communal ethical stance. Not that it's going to stop people who are determined
to use a prohibited drug anyway, but maybe it supports restraint in some
people who are "on the edge".

In respect to designer drugs, I'm very reluctant to say let's have no
regulations at all, that anything goes, because logically lack of safety data
leaves us to assume the risk of harm is significant. The burden of proof ought
to be on the shoulders of those who assert use of the drugs is just harmless
diversion.

~~~
couchand
_Point is with motorcycles, cars, scuba, yes, even horses, the risks are more
or less known and probability of various outcomes, including harm, can be
reasoned about._

Which is why we should legalize and regulate the drugs that we do understand.
The risks of cannabis and LSD are also more or less known, and the (remarkably
low) probability of harm (particularly compared with motorcycles, cars, etc)
can be reasoned about.

The harm in making these well-understood substances criminal is far greater
than the harm in regulating them. Indeed, as the GP points out, the harm in
making the well-understood substances illegal is exacerbated by the harm from
designer analogs.

 _As a clinician and scientist questions of prohibition are largely beside the
point._

You're simply pulling the wool over your eyes if you believe that to be true.
Prohibition is a causal factor in the danger of substance abuse.

------
jseliger
I'm surprised no one has posted a link to this yet, but Mike Power also wrote
_Drugs Unlimited_ ([http://www.amazon.com/Drugs-Unlimited-Revolution-Thats-
Chang...](http://www.amazon.com/Drugs-Unlimited-Revolution-Thats-
Changing/dp/1250054710)), which covers this topic extensively. I wrote about
it here: [http://jakeseliger.com/2014/10/31/drugs-unlimited-the-web-
re...](http://jakeseliger.com/2014/10/31/drugs-unlimited-the-web-revolution-
thats-changing-how-the-world-gets-high-mike-power)

------
coldcode
I've never found any interest in taking anything stronger than an occasional
beer but as a former chemist I find the research into these types of drugs
fascinating. We really do need to look into areas that might be highly illegal
if for no reason other than to learn how the brain works.

~~~
protomyth
I dearly wish that in all the MJ legalization that some company would start
extracting the chemical pain reliever and the appetite stimulant. We reduced
smoking at it would be nice to have these in other forms.

~~~
philwelch
The problem is that, if you're using it as an anti-nausea drug, you really
don't want to take a pill that you're just going to throw up again! You want
another method of intake.

And it turns out that vaporization is not only better for cannabis but tobacco
as well, hence the e-cigarette craze.

~~~
krrrh
E-cigarettes vaporize nicotine, not tobacco.

~~~
philwelch
Which is derived from tobacco, but ok. (Cannabis vaporizers tend to use hash
oil.)

------
girvo
I wish I could share some of my knowledge regarding this. Funnily, a good
friend of mine in NZ is working for the NZ government, and he synthesizes and
tests new drugs, mostly cannabinoids but others too, and works with the NZ
government to determine safety. Fascinating character, too. There is an
underground forum where the smartest chemists I've ever come across hang out
and discuss these novel chemicals, and the routes to get to them.

~~~
pasbesoin
One of the smartest people I've known had a long-standing interest in this
area -- e.g. coming up with his own grow units for magic mushrooms.

He didn't just want to trip. When he took on the interest, he became a
veritable encyclopedia on mushrooms, of various sorts and in general.

This was also back many years before the current "Maker" trend. I guess you
could call him a prototype, or an example of a constant -- there has always
been a certain number of these highly intelligent free-thinkers and builders.

I was never and am not into drugs. Getting to know him, however, did make my
take a closer look at re-evaluate much of the simplistic "drugs are bad"
indoctrination I'd encountered and been force fed growing up.

Just as life and current circumstances have taught me to more carefully re-
evaluate other tropes such as "paying one's dues" and the "self-made man
[person]".

I'm reminded of decades of research into cannabis severely stunted, so I read,
by government policy and laws. "It's bad" and "because we say so" does not
comport well with open and full-ranging scientific inquiry.

------
aikah
> drug laws focused on a group of well-known chemicals have simply pushed
> users towards new and increasingly dangerous forms of chemical stimulation.

This

I often get spams from these businesses selling "legal highs" or something
like that.And of course you wouldnt even know what you'd be buying... they
always have fancy names like "koyotte""mdmazing" or "Dragon kiss" ...

------
Phithagoras
The Government in New Zealand had an interesting response to this sort of
thing. [http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23703-new-zealand-
law-...](http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23703-new-zealand-law-permits-
low-risk-designer-drugs.html#.VI40xivF-So)

Seems like it might be the most effective idea, since, if there are legalized
drugs, the majority of the drug oriented population is likely to stick to the
safe, approved drugs, and, those who are inclined to push limits can easily go
into research without fear of persecution.

~~~
slyall
Unfortunately things didn't work out so well due to later regulations. A
summary here:

[http://publicaddress.net/hardnews/the-twilight-state-of-
the-...](http://publicaddress.net/hardnews/the-twilight-state-of-the-
psychoactive-substances/)

------
pm90
Does anyone find it slightly ironic that opium used to be smuggled into China
by Britain earlier...and even fought wars to keep that trade open.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars)

~~~
civilian
Yup, it's freaking hilarious. It's something like "Opium Wars 2: Revenge of
the Chinese".

------
Nursie
Interesting that this article, originally investigated and published over a
year ago, mentions phenmetrazine - derivatives have just started to appear on
the grey market....

\--edit-- I'm amazed at the quote from Caldicott at the end. WEDINOS is widely
used by the NPS community to check the identity of their substances. It allows
the project to map out drug emergence and for the users it provides a little
safety check. For the founder to have been someone who considers drug use a
disease and prohibition like an antibiotic seems to go against the open, harm-
reductive effects of the service itself.

~~~
kragen
Phenmetrazine is itself a "designer drug"; as sort of explained in the
article, it differs from amphetamine by an oxygen and a couple of carbons
forming a morpholine ring including the amine moiety, and its designers hoped
it would have some of amphetamine's effects (like weight loss) with less side
effects. As with most designer phenethylamines, this turned out badly, though
not as badly as e.g. Fen/Phen. (There have been a lot of "designer"
phenethylamines; are you really sure that "derivatives [of phenmetrazine] have
just started to appear on the grey market"? Are you sure PiHKAL doesn't have a
few?)

~~~
Nursie
Yes, actually, there are no phenmetrazine derivatives in PiHKAL, and yes one
has just recently started to appear on the grey market in the last few months.
3-FPM. There is one other derivative, phendimetrazine, which is prescribed for
some of the purposes phenmetrazine originally was. It is considered a prodrug
for phenmetrazine though, so not really a unique thing in its own right.

Phenmetrazine was originally banned because it was widely abused, not really
because of any health reasons above and beyond the likes of dex-amphetamine,
so far as I can tell, rather than anything like Fen/Phen which causes heart
valve mutations.

~~~
kragen
Thank you for the correction.

------
xbmcuser
Actually it can be stopped very easily legalizing drug use. The major reason
we have for designer drugs is market demand.

~~~
jamesdelaneyie
I don't think so. It's like saying we have Heineken, so why would anyone want
a craft beer?

~~~
dagw
People drink craft beer because they taste better, not because it gets them
drunk better. In fact I'd wager that people whom drink beer because of its
alcohol probably prefer Heineken, since it gives the same end state at half
the price.

~~~
jamesdelaneyie
More than fair point. Craft beers usually do have a higher alcohol percentage
though, so they would actually get you drunk 'better'. Taste would be
subjective however. Personally I'd be 50/50 on getting drunk, having a nice
drink, no reason you can't have both :)

The point being, if all substances were legalised, I think we all could easily
see there being a wide range of branded drugs that might offer the same base
experience with different subtleties to it. Longer and harder or short and
sweet etc. You don't think so?

------
mr_sturd
Seems to me like an excerpt from Powers' book on the subject, _Drugs 2.0_.

It's a great read. Starting out describing the evolution of drug use, and the
relatively recent implementation of laws to control the substances.
Progressing on to the present day, describing the point we're at now - use of
TOR and dark net markets to acquire these compounds, pseudonymously, over the
internet.

------
johneth
There was a somewhat related documentary on the BBC this week about legal
highs in the UK - I'd recommend giving it a watch of you're able to:
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04v3294](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04v3294)

------
rdxm
Seems to me ingesting any chemical compound cooked up in an
unknown/uncontrolled environment, whether that enviro is the design or
manufacturing side of things makes you an active seeker of the Darwin Award.

What's irritating is the expense of public resources bailing people out of the
pursuit of the Darwin Award. Of course the same could be said for smoking,
consumption driven obesity, excessive alcohol intake, etc.

The comment here regarding personal accountability sums it. I suspect if the
financial disincentive is high enough on any one of these topics, people will
deselect participation in said activity. Otherwise society will (or should)
deselect them as beneficiaries of resources, etc..harsh, but what other
practical course of action is there?

~~~
Nursie
Here's the thing - 'designer drugs' or 'research chemicals' or whatever you
want to call them, they all come out of well equipped labs in China. It's not
like Cletus is cooking them up in his kitchen with that low-grade crystal
meth.

They do have unknown harm profiles, for the most part, and they may well have
been designed by someone who just liked to draw in an organic molecule drawing
package, but the production conditions are likely to be pretty modern.

------
thornofmight
Are there any opiate based research chemicals? It seems like I mostly see
psychedelics, or an occasional amphetamine or benzo-like chemical.

~~~
Uberphallus
O-desmethyltramadol and AH-7921 come to my mind.

------
tobico
Another good argument for focusing on harm minimization over prohibition.

------
tt9862
It is cool~!

------
krick
Oh, I really hate these articles. Intriguing headline and then a horribly long
story with all these pseudo-artistic details like "immediately noticed a tense
quality in the ambulance driver’s voice" wich is just too bothersome to
actually read it.

Some TLDR, anyone?

~~~
k-mcgrady
>> "pseudo-artistic details like "immediately noticed a tense quality in the
ambulance driver’s voice""

You mean storytelling?

~~~
frozenport
I can sympathize with OP, sometime we just want the info without pictures of
the Beatles.

~~~
robert_tweed
Seriously, I'm considering writing an HN filtering proxy that ignores these
kinds of magazine pieces. I just don't have time to read them properly, even
if they are interesting enough that I inevitably get drawn into some of them.
That's just another factor in HN becoming a time-sink instead of a productive
source of useful news. I suspect if we had the ability to downvote submissions
as well as upvote, less of them would hit the front page in the first place,
but I can't be certain.

As for this article, the writing is OK, but I honestly wonder sometimes if
these authors are being paid by the word. Take the first paragraph for
instance. Replace it entirely with, "It was a dark and stormy night". Did that
make the article better, worse, or no different?

Had the same information been conveyed in far fewer words, I wouldn't have had
to skim over parts and would have got a lot more out of it. There's definitely
a place for articles like this, but I don't think HN is that place.

~~~
r721
Sorry for wasting your time, I purposedly submitted this on Sunday, a slow
news day.

I can agree though that sometimes it's hard to estimate time which you would
spend on a story. I use a word-counting service (textalyser) for that, and
this particular story is quite long even by longform standards: 7,800 words /
47,000 characters (with spaces).

