This was a very interesting article, thanks for sharing. Also, interesting visual story telling from Reuters who I feel generally lags in visual storytelling compared to NYT.
I had no idea so many different precursors could make fentanyl, that’s pretty wild.
They do very little visually interesting stuff with their normal news coverage, but their special reports tend to be quite visually interesting.
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/
Oh, also, you’re welcome. If I do come across something I find interesting I generally try to remember to post it to lemmy, because I feel that we really can use the content.
Are you mocking my efforts of pasting random links into an app and pressing a button? Appalling.
Chemistry is fascinating, and if you look at molecular structures of things, you can make SO many things out of other things with the right reactions and filters.
The trick is making the reactions work without binding toxic chemicals to the end product.
So that limits what you can use, but there are still so many options for things.
You’d be surprised what you can use to make aspirin.
So, you’re gonna stop running ads on your articles?
This isn’t really that surprising. Over 20 years ago I took a course where the professor explained how anyone with a decent understanding of chemistry could turn $300 of raw ingredients into $1 million worth of LSD.
The problem has always been distribution, which is what makes Breaking Bad such a good show. For the average person, having a shit load of illegal drugs with a $3 million value on the street is not the same thing as having $3 million cash.
My friend accidentally ended up befriending one of the largest distributors of LSD in the country. She didn’t even know until she went to a party with him, and he whipped out a pint sized dropper bottle full of acid. Each drop was $10. That one bottle was worth like $80,000.
She didn’t go to any parties with him after that. Apparently she had a great time that evening, but the anxiety of “what if he gets busted while I’m hanging out with him” kept her from being comfortable around him. She did learn some fascinating things from him though.
Apparently LSD producers are very hippie and do it purely for love of the substance; They just want to spread it to as many people as possible. They sell to the distributors basically at cost, which is how it’s able to stay so cheap per hit; $10 will last you pretty much all day, unless you’re regularly doing massive doses and have built a resistance to it. That’s also why LSD isn’t trafficked by groups like gangs or cartels; The suppliers simply won’t sell to them, because they don’t want the gangs and cartels fighting over it and increasing street prices.
It’s also incredibly easy for traffickers to hide, so the risk of getting caught is low. It dissolves in alcohol, so traffickers can just throw it into a vodka bottle in the trunk of their car. If they get pulled over and searched, they just say it’s left over liquor from a party they went to last week. As long as they’re sober while driving, cops can’t bust them for just having liquor in their trunk.
I get it Reuters, the profit margins are huge. Quit bragging and sell me that shit
Ngl, trying to crack down on this seems like a hopeless battle without authoritarian controls on chemistry lab equipment. This general problem is going to be much bigger in the future as well. Today it’s fentanyl and in the future it will be synthetic pathogens
