Drugs
and How They Are Made
Hi,
my name is Corry and Justin asked me to write a brief article
on drugs and how they are made.
This is not a rehash of how bad drugs are and how you will sell your
body for the next fix. This isn't a lecture
on
how opioids like heroin cause dependence by affecting the Î
1⁄4-, δ- and κ-opioid receptors in the brain.
This article is merely to open your eyes about the other "stuff" commonly
found in the product you buy from your
"friend", the dealer.
Briefly
my background:
I am a qualified Pharmacist with a research based Masters
Degree (M.Sc.) in Pharmaceutical and Organic
Chemistry. The stuff you see on CSI like DNA, Mass Spectrometry,
Nuclear Magnetic Resonance and many more, I
have done. I have used the equipment, published in international
peer reviewed journals, met and worked with Nobel Prize
holders and lectured at university. We are the guys who
"think shit up" Rocket science
stuff! Apart
from that, I am a normal guy that likes doing normal things like
spearfishing (it turns out being able to hold yourbreath for 5 minutes
is useful after all)!
Now
back to the article.
Despite all the evidence and results of drug abuse you
still think that drugs aren't bad!
Think about this though for a minute! The medicines you
buy in pharmacies have been produced according to very
strict guidelines and quality assurance protocols regulated
by law. Companies are being continuously audited and checked
to see whether they comply with these standards. Further
to that, the places where the pharmaceutical companies
get all their raw materials from (i.e. the stuff they use
to make the medicines) are also audited. They employ highly
qualified scientists, working in state of the art labs
at great costs to produce said products. These scientists
make the CSI guys look like
a bunch of high school science geeks. This may seem a
waste of time and money, but it is to ensure that you the
consumer/customer/patient gets the best quality, safest
most dependable product in the market place.
What has this got to do with those "so-called" illegal-not-so-bad-for-you-drugs
like cocaine, heroine, crack, ecstasy etc? Firstly, as
illegal drugs are sold on the black market, there is no
regulatory body to ensure YOUR safety or
to guarantee the "quality"
of the product. Illegal drugmanufacturers, free from
all this hassle, make the cheapest, nastiest horrible products
often employing un-qualified semi-literate people in ill
equipped
"labs" to churn out product. In any chemical synthesis, to obtain a pure product
you have to remove all the solvents like benzene, acetone, ether etc through
a
very time consuming difficult process. The illegal drug manufacturers don't
because this "costs" them more money and time. All the raw materials they buy/use
are sourced from the cheapest supplier, often from countries free of any regulatory
bodies. So what goes into those supposedly pure raw materials? Your guess is
as
good as mine! If the drug manufacturers make the stuff as cheaply as possible
why oh why are drugs so expensive? Surely the manufacturers will be civic minded
and cut their prices for the convenience of their customers. The reason is that
chemical synthesis is a very complicated, dangerous and lengthy process that
can take several days and even months for some products. Only well practised
qualified scientists using the very best equipment and chemicals can get the
desired yields which helps to keep costs down. As already mentioned the manufacturers
don't have any of these. So we have a product that has no control
over its quality and safety. You don't know what other solvents
or junk is in the product as you have no guarantee or recourse should something
go wrong. I mean really, who do you phone to complain about the quality of your
drugs? Do you get a refund if you're not satisfied with the
product?
So you still think drugs aren't bad for you? Now add you friend
the dealer who sells the stuff. He/She sells the stuff because
they probably too have a habit that needs financing. The clever
ones probably aren’t
users and just sell to make a quick buck. Then again "clever" is
probably not the right word.
As said above, your friend the dealer is selling the stuff to make
a profit. Say the dealer buys 1kg of drugs to sell to customers.
Does he: (a) split the product nicely into a 1000 x 1g packets,
or, (b) mix in stuff like glucose, starch, bicarb, salt, soap powder
(don't laugh, this has been done with heroin resulting in disastrous
consequences to the users who injected the stuff) or whatever the
hell else he can get his hands on to increase the amount he has
so to make more profit? I think if you seriously reflect and answer
to the questionis (b). If, on the off chance you manage to eventually
find a dealer that doesn't cut his product you
will most probably overdose and die, as again, you have no guarantee
of the dosage nor potency of the product. Isn't
that just peachy?
Now you, the end user have a product that has no quality assurance,
has been contaminated with who knows what and you still feel it
is okay to sniff, snort, drink, pop, inject, smoke or shoot up?
By
Corry Versluis |
