Most likely. The article was not very technical, and neither was my reading of it.
Yes, meth users do appreciate the quality of the meth that they choose to consume. There are two types of meth depending on the method and ingredients. There is L-meth or levorotary and D-meth or dextrorotary the later of the two carrying a higher sentence because of its strength. Many drug dealers like to stick with one cook to ensure that they receive the same kind of product for their customers but there are those who cut corners by leaving out ingredients or skipping a step in the production stage. The d-meth is the most desirable because it is the purest of the two. Now there are many other kinds of meth that may be produced but they are of poor quality and may cause undesirable side effects like extreme paranoia, deep states of depression, hallucinations, and rashes.
Today, what I have found is that there is less and less of the d-meth being manufactured because the ingredients are difficult to procure, the cooks are dead or serving long sentences in prison, or the cooks of today are just not as informed as the old school cooks. In fact, I quit using because the stuff that is being made today just isn’t like it use to be. I am nearly four years clean this November after using for about two years. Before that I had 14 years clean and sober, but it was the time before this that I was really into the sub culture and using. That is when the meth was quality stuff and would produce the desired energy and self-confidence many users seek. It was great for weight loss and cleaning. But those days are over.
What is the etymology of “the Nazi method?”
The synthesis is reputedly similar to that used by the Germans during WWII. Amphetamines were widely used to keep exhausted soldiers going by the American, British and Japanese as well. I suspect that the manufacturing techniques to produce amphetamines for military use by all sides were similar, in actuality.
yes exactly. An amateur wouldn’t know how to use the equipment Gus had to scale up production to produce 400 pounds a week. Walter knew how to use all the industrial equipment to run a “super-lab”. Walt obsesses over the quality, but to Gus the important thing is just that he can run a lab that pumps out that much meth and would turn up and be reliable.
Gus had a LOT of people to pay off. He couldn’t afford to have a flaky unreliable and unprofessional cook. Thats what made Walter rich. His ability to run a large scale lab, not his quality obsession.
There was a documentary on I believe PBS that discussed the purity of meth and the rates of addiction. During certain periods purity would go up or down based on government policy. If there was a crackdown, people would start smurfing and making it in 2 liters which decreased purity. Sometimes professional chemists in Mexico and south america would the the ones making it in super labs, so the purity would go up.
It was found that there was a correlation between the purity of the meth on the street and the rates of addiction, although I don’t remember how strongly the two met. So in that regard, there could be something to the idea.
Is “smurfing” drug slang like “step on it?”
Or is it English slang I’m just not hep to?
Methylamine. It’s a major plot point in several seasons and many major events turn on the availability and acquisition of more of the goo.
Which is a substance, as more than one chemist has pointed out, that Walt should be able to synthesize by the barrel.
Er…almost every sentence of this contains some sort of grievous factual error. I don’t have time right now to run through them one by one, but most of these errors derive from the fact that the levorotatory enantiomer not only has no psychoactive properties, it is perfectly legal to manufacture or possess.
Yeah, I caught that too. Snorting D-Meth will get you high and make the party last for days. Snorting L-Meth will unclog your sinuses.
There’s a Crocodile Dundee joke in here somewhere.
Indeed, you can buy the levo-methamphetamine at the grocery store, in the form of the Vick’s Inhaler that looks like a tube of chapstick.
Smurfing is when crimes are committed on a small, local scale to avoid the authorities who would be more prone to notice you committing larger scale crimes. Meth manufactured on a large, international scale (by trained chemists in south america in nations where the precursor materials are easier to get) will be much higher purity than those made by users without the scientific background working with chemicals they have to extract from various OTC products (batteries, sudafed, drano, paint thinner, etc).
I usually hear it in contexts where there’s some legal limit on something, so you break up transactions into smaller chunks that come in just below the limit. For example, banks are supposed to report deposits of more then $X to the Feds. So money launders “smurf” their deposits into chunks of $X-1 dollars.
Or in the context of meth, laws prohibit anyone from buying more then X amount of cold medicines, so producers have to smurf their purchases, buying the limited amount in multiple stores.
[QUOTE=Simplicio]
{snip} For example, banks are supposed to report deposits of more then $X to the Feds. So money launders “smurf” their deposits into chunks of $X-1 dollars. {snip}
[/QUOTE]
I seem to remember reading somewhere that it’s a crime to break up deposits in order to avoid triggering the mandatory reporting. I’ll have to go look up a cite for that.
I think it’s realistic, if he is producing a product that has higher purity which very few seem to posess, but I’m not sure that is the most important thing. I think very few can make the higher grade though, but if they can and it’s high purity, it should sell quick. I imagine getting the equipment to produce large amounts without drawing attention might not be too difficult to purchase as well. It seems like the biggest problem and trick is probably always going to be getting the ingredients on a regular basis to make massive amounts. Kind of hard to do in any country, especially the US.
I’ve seen the movie Blow and also read the book which dealt with cocaine. Purity again is what counted. George Jung made $100 million in a short amount of time just by smuggling in it. The demand was huge because he had high quality product that was very pure, and other dealers didn’t have any problem paying top dollar, because they had plenty of room to cut it and make a small fortune themselves. There is a scene in the movie where they are testing the purity, and one of the junkies (played by Bobcat Goldthwait) is checking for the purity of it by testing a small amount on a heating plate, and the temperature keeps climbing higher and higher, he was freaking out, he knew that wasn’t just ordinary cocaine. I see no reason why this wouldn’t apply to purer forms of meth too.
I’m guessing 98% of them don’t really make a damn thing, and get hooked on their own shit, and can’t think straight enough to know what the hell is going on, other than spending all of their time trying to get their next fix.
Anyone seen the movie Spun? Funny as hell, and it gives you a good idea of what is going through the mind of a meth user. If you haven’t seen it, and think you want to, get the unrated version. It has an all star cast, John Leguizamo, Mickey Rourke, the late Britanny Murphy, Deborah Harry (Blondie), and a few others.
I watched the PBS special on meth that Wesley Clark mentions in post # 46 which dealt with purity and addiction. I thought it was very interesting showing this correlation.
I spent a fair bit of time putting these guys in jail. I am not in the US, but I suspect the principles are universal.
There is a complex set of competing imperatives at play.
Most cooks are ill-educated, learning at the hands of equally ill-educated clots, and teaching each other old wives tales along with actual chemistry. They approach meth cooking like food cooking. The recipes are all “Mix 4 ozs of X with 3 ozs of Y dissolved in Z and heat till it looks like A”. They have no capacity, as professional chemists do, to assay the purity of the precursor products and the product along the way. They have no capacity to maintain temperature properly.
I am told by the government chemists who do the analysis of this sort of thing that technique is important in getting maximum yield. Precursors are expensive and hard to get. High purity is a consequence of efficient use of the scarce precursors. It also has the advantage of the final product not containing unused reagent that might be highly undesirable, or require extra steps (which the cook might only dimly understand) to wash it.
Our market is dominated by locally manufactured speed. The logical consequence of the above is that production is dominated by suitcase labs. Cook sources himself or is supplied with precursors, and does a quick cook in some out of the way place. Time is of the essence - the process stinks, and the longer you take, the higher the risk of detection. His product feeds into a distribution network of some sophistication. The occasional bad batch gets treated as an aberration; the occasional arrest doesn’t do too much damage to the overall system. It’s all run on a complex system of debts, credit, and threats enforced by bike gangs.
Going large scale has obvious benefits if you can source large quantities of high grade precursors, but you need to be really confident in your cook. And the obvious risk is the “eggs in one basket” problem.
Rationally, having a genuine professional chemist would present a dilemma. It would be tempting to have him do all your cooking, but that would expose both of you to serially increased risk of arrest. Alternatively, to risk it all on one big cook means you have to max out your capital in accessing lots of precursors. If your cook gets arrested, you still have to pay back the debts you got into. Same as if he rips you off.
Best bet is to use him to up skill other cooks in your stable, but that represents a security risk as different arms of your operation get to know each other.
All up, better to have a good cook than a mediocre one, but maximising the benefits of access to him requires surfing all those dilemmas.