

Q&A with the Professor behind the good science in 'Breaking Bad' - RougeFemme
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/talking-back/2013/08/21/the-straight-dope-a-qa-with-the-prof-behind-the-good-science-in-breaking-bad/?WT_mc_id=SA_DD_20130821

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DennisP
"The DEA helped to ensure that certain critical steps were omitted and that
everything in this regard was kept legal."

I wonder what the legal justification for this is, given the First Amendment.

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lgas
It looks like it was done voluntarily as a CYA measure:

"The DEA helped to ensure that certain critical steps were omitted and that
everything in this regard was kept legal. That was very smart of Vince. That
ensured that any complaints they received could be referred to the DEA."

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malandrew
It's actually probably a lot more than CYA insofar as civil liability is
concerned. IIRC Meth in particular is a drug in a class all by itself with
respect to the first amendment. The Methamphetamine Anti-Proliferation Act of
1999 contained language sufficiently broad enough that merely hyperlinking to
instructional content on the Internet would have been considered a federal
crime because doing so would constitute knowingly providing information that
would aid in the production of a controlled substance. I don't recall if the
language that would have had first amendment implications made it into the
final bill or not.

Even now the USG is trying to stifle free speech by going after people
teaching techniques on how to beat polygraph tests.

