
In Quest for a 'Legal High,' Chemists Outfox the Law - J3L2404
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704763904575550200845267526.html
======
dtf
This is the effect of drug prohibition in our modern age. You can attack the
supply chain, but not the demand. Savvy entrepreneurs, internet marketing and
a cornucopia of untested synthetic drugs will continue to satisfy the demands
of a largely youthful consumer base.

We've made the safest drugs illegal, only to open up a vast market in utter
unknowns. Better the devil you know.

~~~
dkersten
_We've made the safest drugs illegal_

This is the problem.. They've also made alcohol, which is supposedly more
dangerous than, for example, cannabis or MDMA, legal. Nicotine is also
dangerous and legal.

~~~
silentbicycle
Sugary water will catch wild yeasts from the air and spontaneously ferment
into alcohol [1]. It's _incredibly_ difficult to prevent its production.
AFAIK, 5-MeO-DMT or "Meow Meow" don't magically appear just because you forgot
to put a jug of apple cider in the fridge.

[1]: <http://www.homebrewtalk.com/wiki/index.php/Tej>

Also, alcohol generally isn't that dangerous, unless people are driving and/or
concentrating it via distillation.

~~~
CitizenKane
Generally, the safety of a given substance can be determined through its
therapeutic index. The therapeutic index for a substance is calculated by
taking the amount of the substance that will induce toxicity in 50% of a
population divided the dose that will induce the effect of the drug in 50% of
the population. In short, the ratio of how much will be (acutely) toxic to how
much will make you high.

Here are some therapeutic indexes for common drugs [0]:

Heroin - 6

Alcohol - 10

Cocaine - 15

MDMA - 16

LSD - ~1000

THC - > 1000

Alcohol has very dangerous acute effects and it's very possible to overdose on
alcohol. Compare to THC where a toxic dose is on the level of 15g. Assuming
that THC is approximately 5% of the content of the cannabis [1] this would
mean smoking 300 grams of cannabis (with 100% absorption by the body). That
would make for ~600 joints (with a joint having about half a gram of cannabis)
to get to a level of toxicity.

So relatively speaking, Alcohol (at least in the short term) is quite
dangerous.

[0] PDF -
[http://web.cgu.edu/faculty/gabler/toxicity%20Addiction%20off...](http://web.cgu.edu/faculty/gabler/toxicity%20Addiction%20offprint.pdf)

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_%28drug%29#Potency>

~~~
2arrs2ells
Those are great statistics for judging the likelihood of _overdosing_
(although, I'm not sure it's the only factor to consider - the physically
small amount of cocaine needed to OD probably mitigates its higher therapeutic
index).

If you want to evaluate _danger_ there are other factors that need to be
considered -- i.e. people "safely" high on MDMA may dehydrate, and people
"safely" high on LSD may jump off of a bridge.

~~~
swombat
_people "safely" high on LSD may jump off of a bridge._

Sober people may jump off a bridge too. Should we outlaw sobriety? The "man on
LSD thinks he can fly and jumps out of window" myth is largely that: a myth.
If I recall, it was inspired by a real story of LSD experimentation on some
kind of federal agent, who was given a good dose of LSD without his knowledge,
thought he was going mad, and threw himself out of a window to make it end.

~~~
neilk
I came here to post this and found a new possible source for the "jumping off
the bridge" meme.

[http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-
columbia/story/2010/10/24/b...](http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-
columbia/story/2010/10/24/bc-capilano-suspension-bridge-death.html)

Long story short, a student took LSD on a class trip, which involved a visit
to the Capilano Suspension Bridge. The student didn't jump off the bridge, but
climbed a railing on an observation deck and fell.

------
tptacek
This was going on at least back in 2000-2001; I still have a "poisonous non-
consumables" catalog in my basement somewhere (I have friends who are into
this kind of thing).

Read the forum posts about this stuff online; it's funny, there's a backlash
of enthusiasts calling vendors like this guy "slash and burn" outfits for
popularizing chemicals and getting them banned.

------
roel_v
Meh, this has been going on since MDMA was put on banned substances lists
across the world in the 1980's. Up until a few years ago, so-called 'smart
shops' (in the Netherlands selling drug paraphernalia, 'coming down' products
like vitamin pills and magic mushrooms before they were banned) would sell
2C-B which has been synthesized by Shulgin in the 1970's already, and
documented along with MDMA, MDA, MDE etc. in PIHKAL.

Drug legislation that I am familiar with (all of them Western European) is
designed to cope with this process. There is usually a 'drug act' which
prohibits all materials on a secondary list, and this list is then to be
adjust by 'the minister' or similar, which in practice means that there is a
ministry that can fairly easily (within a few weeks) add substances that are
banned. It's cat and mouse, true, but the 'war' (between chemists and the
government) had largely calmed down by the late 1990's. I guess when new forms
of drugs come into vogue, that variations pop up, but these too will be driven
into the margins in a few years. (typically after a while the processes for
manufacturing become so difficult or dependent on expensive/hard to get
precursors that it get out of reach for amateur chemists, at which the police
call it 'good enough'.)

For those interested, the Uncle Fester books
(<http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Preisler>) are readily available online
and very interesting from a 'chemistry hacker' point of view (I don't know
anything about chemistry but I still enjoyed reading them very much, for the
'underground glamour' aspect and the inventiveness. Don't take any of the
legal advice in the books though, the guy may be a great chemist but on other
things he has some strange ideas.).

As a side note, is this 'meow meow' really popular across Europe? I don't know
much about it but it seems to me that it's only widely spread in the UK (then
again I get all my information on 'the scene' from journal articles and
government reports so I may just be lagging in information).

------
rms
Note that these chemicals are mostly automatically illegal in the USA under
the Federal Analog Act. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Analog_Act>

However, the Federal Analog Act has been notably tested twice in court to
criminalize new substances and the Act was not upheld the first time and was
upheld the second time. So it is not of yet well established and it is
suppliers that are at risk of prosecution, not consumers.

~~~
viraptor
Not knowing enough about chemistry: what are the chances of people with
medicine bought in another country being stopped as carrying something
"substantially similar" to a drug?

~~~
rms
0+, the federal analog exists as a law on the books but takes a concerted
prosecution effort to use.

------
dkersten
_European authorities blame mephedrone for the death of three young people in
the U.K. and Sweden in recent years._

Except, at least in the case of the two teenagers who died in the UK, it was
in the news a few months ago that autopsies later showed that they didn't
actually have any mephedrone in their systems.

~~~
jakerocheleau
scare tactics induced by the media to try and cover up these drugs. I'm not
defending drone, it's a horribly fiendish poison and it's certainly something
which can kill you if taken in a large enough dose. But media corps lying
about the facts on these drugs isn't helping us advance anywhere

~~~
dkersten
I completely agree.

By the way, I know a few people who have taken mephedrone and the general
consensus is that its bad: side-effects appear to include not being able to
sleep for the next few days, depression, agitation and loss of concentration.
I would very strongly advize people to _NOT_ take mephedrone.

------
jacoblyles
Under current policy regimes consumers seek drugs which aren't illegal yet and
don't pay much attention to their safety or lack of safety testing. This seems
suboptimal. If these drugs were legal, consumers would prefer drugs that made
them feel good and had a good safety record.

~~~
kablamo
I think libertarians under estimate the good that can come from regulation.
Regulation can protect people before the bad thing happens. If the drug kills
you, your family can take that company to court and get them shut down, but
you are already dead and that sucks.

On the other hand, I suspect that over regulation by the US FDA has killed a
large number of people by making it too difficult for new medicines to get to
market.

Any choice in the prohibition/regulation debate is going result in some dead
people. The goal is to find the point on the spectrum with the least number of
deaths. I don't know exactly where that is, but I do feel over regulation is
destroying Mexico and other parts of South America and we should move towards
less regulation.

~~~
jacoblyles
Keeping the conversation within the domain of the current article, there is no
policy goal to mitigate harm from recreational drugs. If a drug makes people
feel good it will be outlawed whether it is completely harmless or very
dangerous. This has the side effect of pushing some people from relatively
harmless but illegal drugs whose effects are well understood to potentially
harmful new drugs that are not yet illegal.

No lives will be saved by this policy, which isn't surprising since the goal
is not harm mitigation (despite the rhetoric of government officials) but
keeping people from consuming psychoactive substances that make them feel
good.

Are far as FDA regulation vs. liability is concerned - you cannot outlaw the
production of drugs which will kill some people. All you can do is provide
incentives for drug makers to research the risks of their products as
thoroughly as possible. Drugs are still approved by the FDA that kill people
despite the fact that the FDA approval process is stupidly expensive.

There is no perfect world. The goal of policy should be to reduce risk in a
cost-effective way. Harm reduction should be balanced with the corresponding
damage regulation does to life-saving medical research. After we weigh various
policies we may find that the status quo is suboptimal.

As rational people we should keep our minds on the right trade-offs and the
right metrics. Many people are comfortable with the idea of a regulatory state
regardless of its effectiveness - it makes them feel safe. We should not let
these emotions of safety influence our thinking overmuch.

~~~
patrickk
_" If a drug makes people feel good it will be outlawed whether it is
completely harmless or very dangerous."_

 _" ....the goal is not harm mitigation (despite the rhetoric of government
officials) but keeping people from consuming psychoactive substances that make
them feel good."_

Supporting evidence? Those are some dramatic claims you are making.

I felt good with morphine in my system after an operation, and felt a lot
worse without it once the effects wore off. Also, a nice cold beer is just the
ticket after a long week. No danger of those being banned anytime soon.

~~~
jacoblyles
Marijuana is safer than alcohol or tobacco, and it's certainly safer than
whatever recreational substance some guy is cooking up in his lab. Why is it
illegal? Have you seen "Reefer Madness"? Scientific piece of work, that.

Meanwhile, some kids at Georgetown University face 20 years in prison for
making an illegal but less intense version of a drug which is legal in 47
states: [http://reason.com/blog/2010/10/26/the-georgetown-drug-lab-
bu...](http://reason.com/blog/2010/10/26/the-georgetown-drug-lab-bust-m).

A huge short-term risk from most recreational drugs is simply not knowing what
is in them, especially if they come in a pill, powder, or liquid form. And
that is an effect of prohibition, not the drugs themselves. Of course
government officials will pontificate on the horrors of drugs every time
prohibition kills another kid that doesn't know what is in his ecstasy.

------
noonespecial
I think its going to be a pretty short trip from here to laws that are worded
so "that which is not expressly permitted is automatically denied".

~~~
tptacek
These chemicals are already illegal under straightforward interpretations of
US law, but they're not illegal "enough" to prevent them from being sold
online and shipped Fedex.

This seems like the kind of "illegal" that mostly matters if you hang a sign
out your window and start doing business.

It's worth noting though that there's really no intellectually valid argument
in support of mephedrone or MDAI or whatever-the-hell-else they're selling ---
if you're going to make meth, cocaine, and LSD illegal, this stuff clearly
should be too.

~~~
dtf
MDAI and MDAT seem to me to be particularly suitable drugs for therapy.
Whenever you blanket ban a group of chemicals you also make research on
medicinal use practically impossible.

------
bryanh
You can see the actual products the have for sale here:
<http://alchemylabz.eu/products.php>. A little Googling on the listed
analogues for sale reveals that most people in the usual forums for
recreational drug use have long written these sorts of guys of as scammers.
However, with this WSJ article, I'd say they are now verified as legit. I
expect his business to pick up considerably...

Needless to say, this is quite an interesting game of cat and mouse and just
goes further to illustrate the futility of prohibition.

------
olalonde
There was a small cafe here in Montreal that used to sell legal highs but had
to shut its doors due to pressures from law enforcement. I once tried Salvia
Divinorum (which has no known negative side effects [1]) and I can testify
it's definitely not a placebo as I first suspected with "legal highs".

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvia_divinorum#Long_term>

~~~
michael_dorfman
_I can testify it's definitely not a placebo as I first suspected with "legal
highs"._

Cool! How did you set up the double-blind study?

~~~
ghotli
Don't be fooled by thinking salvia is just a "legal high". It can cause
profound ego-loss for upwards of ten minutes. The history is that it is what
native american shamans used to chew on to see visions.

A common experience is one in which people say "I forgot that I was something,
then I realized I was something but I wasn't sure what that was." They then
had to figure out the world again as the drug wore off. I think it's foolish
to group something this psychologically powerful within the same group as
something that "just gets you high" like alcohol or pot.

<http://www.erowid.org/plants/salvia/salvia.shtml>

~~~
olalonde
You're right that it's much more powerful than alcohol/pot but the truth is
that _it is legal_ in most countries and states. The "upside" is that its
effects totally wear off after ~15 minutes and there are no known long term or
addictive effects.

~~~
dkersten
The fact that some drugs are _legal_ certainly doesn't mean they're not as
strong or powerful than ones that are illegal. Salvia is, apparently, one of
the strongest hallucinogens there is. The difference between it and, say, LSD,
is that the Salvia "trip" only lasts ten to twenty minutes. I have personally
tried Salvia some years back and have had some seriously bizzare experiences.
I'd rather not post them online, but if you're interested, send me an email.

------
JonnieCache
Mephedrone is horrible stuff, quite similar to methamphetamine in
chemistry/effects on the body.[1] It was EXTREMELY popular in the UK when it
was legal up until last year. This was due to the total and complete
unavailability of the much safer, less addictive and much more well tested
MDMA (ecstacy) from the summer of 2008 until mid 2009.

This has been speculated to have happened as a result of international co-
operation to make sassafras oil, the main precursor of MDMA less available,
and generally crack down on the production of one of the worlds most popular
synthetic narcotic drugs. This almost certainly had a lot to do with the 2008
summer olympics in china, where a lot of production of precursors and final
products occurs.

The law of unintended consequences rears its head again. Prevent the supply of
one drug and the demand switches to a newer more dangerous drug, whose supply
you have no ability to control.

[1]
[http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/drugs/acmd1/acmd-c...](http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/drugs/acmd1/acmd-
cathinodes-report-2010)

------
nphase
Haha, reminds me of The 51st State (<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0227984/>)

