There is going to be an awesome new show on AMC about a chemistry teacher that finds out he is dying, and becomes a meth cook to provide for his family after he is gone.


http://www.amctv.com/originals/breakingbad/


I thought everyone might want to check it out.

definately gonna check it out!!

when does it start/come on?

Thats like Weeds...on umm.....Meth

How does that even make sense? Who comes to that idea? I'm going to die... I should make meth. First off, that's just a ridiculous concept. Second off... How does that support for them once he's dead? Is his ghost going to continue cooking and selling? I'm confused by this whole idea.

The concept is fairly simple, He finds he's going to die, decides to use his knowledge in chemistry to aquire a large sum of money for his family when he dies (when a person is cooking up ounces of Pure Methamphetamine they often choose to "sell" it in exchange for currency or stolen goods).

Step1: Cook meff
Step 2: Sell Meff
Step 3: Bank Money
Step 4: Die
Step 5: Family Takes money you banked and lives on it

I don't think it's a very believable concept is all... I mean, if you had a vast chemical knowledge, you'd choose to make one of the easiest and possibly cheapest of all drugs to make? It just doesn't make sense. If you know that much, why not create a drug that sells for more money, or at least has a shorter duration of effect? I mean... Couldn't he just as easily import coca leaves, extract the cocaine, and sell that; or make crack from it and then sell that? You'd make much more money that way. It's just good business. I mean honestly, choose between a drug that last hours and hours, or one that lasts about 5 minutes... I think any intelligent person would see the clear choice there.

troll

He must be a piss poor chemist if his biggest idea is a batch of meth.



btw, meth is a fuck of a lot more profitable than cocaine.

*rolls eyes* Ok... if it's really necessary I can try to explain it more slowly... Meth has one of the longest active durations of abuse able drugs. Meth also is one of the (if not the) easiest drugs to make. Meth ALSO is incredibly cheap to purchase. What is everyone missing? If this guy supposedly has some vast drug knowledge, don't you think it would make more sense for him to make and sell a drug with a shorter high, and a higher price? Am I the only person who here is even halfway decent at business, or has everyone here just scrambled their brains with drugs?
edit: HA, since when is Meth a bigger money maker then coke? It's pretty easy to tell when Meth has been cut. It's a lot harder for the average idiot to tell when their blow has been cut. Not to mention people go through 8balls of blow daily EASILY. I rarely hear of someone doing an 8 ball of tweek in one day... And I know a DAMN lot of tweekers. I mean think about it, if Meth were so much more profitable... wouldn't the cartels just switch to meth? It's easier to produce, the USA can't spray the fields since meth isn't coming directly from a plant, and you could make it just as easily anywhere as you could in say Columbia... It just doesn't make sense... I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.

The concept is as believable as they come, MANY follow it, you're right, if you had all that chemical knowledge he'd choose to make the cheapest and easiest... Meth is. Around here meth sells for $600 a gram, now theres 16 grams in an ounce, $9600 per ounce... how ever ounces per cook (I don't know, I'm not a meth cook) would appear to equal a shitload of money. Because importing coca would be alot harder than making meth. Any intelligent person would see the clear choice... The one that lasts hours and hours.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA $600 A GRAM!!! YOU'RE GETTING SCREWED BUDDY!!! I don't know where you live but in these parts it's easily under $30 for a gram of some good crystal shit. Either you just have some really shitty sources, or you're living on the North Pole or some shit... Because god damn... I can't see any way someone would pay more than 30x a normal rate for such a shitty drug.

He's a highschool chem teacher who decided to take advantage of a boom in demand for meth.

Apparently his lab is on wheels too, sooo ya just gotta drive to where the demand is.

Makes sense to me. :)

Around here meth sells for $600 a gram, now theres 16 grams in an ounce, $9600 per ounce...

Err...what?

Ok, 30 a gram is insanely cheap, and you must be friends with a cook or a friend of a friend of a cook, because I've never seen it go below 100 a gram on the street level, unless you buy in bulk.

And meth is cheaper to produce, if the proper route is used. I'm not talking about RPI, I'm talking about P2P.

If you actually knew anything about meth production you would know that prope dope costs pennies on the dollar compared to cocaine to manufacture.

But you do have a point about duration of action, BUT again, I've never seen a meth dealer who was like OMG I CANT SELL DIS MEFF 4 NUFFIN!

If you have meth, that shit will sell. Period.

And I think making prope dope from scratch would be a fuck of a lot easier than importing KILOS upon KILOS of coca leaf, as well as legally safer, and a whole FUCK LOAD cheaper.

lern ur droog recipeez

Haha, holy shit... Everyone must be getting ripped off then. I hate stimulants, especially meth. And for the most part I do what I can to stay far away from tweekers, let alone the cooks... In Arizona that's a FAIRLY common price. I don't know where you guys live, but you need to find new sources. And of course Meth is cheap to produce... I never said it wasn't... I actually know quite a LOT about the production of Meth, if I wanted to, I could make some myself with one visit to my local grocery store. It's very easy for anyone with a comprehension of chemistry over the 5th grade, and the internet, to do. It's ignorant to say that I don't know what I'm talking about, when I guarantee I know more about drug manufacture, use, abuse, and chemistry then at least 90% of the people on this site. For instance, I can make pure MDMA with one visit to my local mall. I can manufacture practically any substance you can name, with few exceptions (LSD being one of them... That shit is damn hard to produce. Unfortunate, because if it wasn't I'd be flooding this state with it…) I'm not saying that the meth he makes wouldn't sell, I'm just saying I know for a fact you could make more money with another substance.
If there was so much more money to be made on meth, nobody would sell anything but. It's just simple logic. Think about it, if meth lasts, let's just say 4 to 6 hours (let's just say...). And let's say that crack lasts about 5 minutes... Ok, now ASSUMING the shitty SHITTY price of 100 a gram (a ridiculously overpriced gram, but...) and 5 dollars a vial (fairly common) that STILL means you'd be making almost 3 times as much with the crack. And that's if you're getting the tweek from a dealer who's ripping you off so bad, anyone I know would shank him for suggesting that price. If you were getting it from a normal dealer it would be something like 10 times the profit.

But you forget to take into account the cost of importing all that coca. I mean, it's not even possible, that's why it's processed down there, and not here. Why move a bunch of useless plant material when you can extract the goodies and move that? More money per weight and volume. With an average alkaloid content of 1-2% depending on freshness the sheer mass of plant material to be moved is mind boggling.

And you better have a source too, hope you own some coca fields yourself, as well as some BIG ass private planes. And industrial sized equipment to handle it all.


Not to mention extraction isn't really chemistry, it is, pretty much, but chemists are more known for MAKING things, synthesizing, than they are for extracting. Extracting is usually just one of the first steps. If there isn't a bona fide reaction, it ain't chem. Just cleaning some plants.

And since the movie is about a chemistry teacher, and not a botany teacher, meth is more fitting.


But yes, I will give you the fact that cocaine and crack do have a much higher sales volume. I wasn't arguing that, just about economic feasibility between the two, crack and meth. Importing all that coca is just plain impossible. You may as well just get connects for good pure powder, and go from there.

Which has nothing to do with being a chemistry teacher at all.

I can kind of understand cause it's a series...How long can it really be? I could see a movie, but not tv show. Besides it wouldn't be interesting if it was mdma or something...Alot of tweakers live a pretty off the hook crazy life.

But you can make bank off meth quickly and easily almost anywhere. The only one that comes close is coke, specially back between 1997-2005. It's really died down now...Give a good 15-20 years and it will be back strong.

T guy with "business sense":

for someone with "ganja" and "420" in his name you are a really hyper guy.

lol@noob totally missing wtf mahatma means

lol y u shot mahatma?


mahatma hat! My hat's on fire!

Yeah well it's a rather old account name, and I had Mahatmaganja without a 420, but lost the password. So... I had to make this account.
Now, as for stupid noob... I’ve taken into account the cost of importing the coca leaves. It really isn’t that high when you do it in bulk. And while I can see where you’d think how you do, it isn’t impossible. It isn’t even close to impossible. Hell you know how much coca the Coca-Cola Company imports every single year? (Yup, surprise, they still import tons of it every year. One of the world’s largest importers of it) “To this day, Coca-Cola uses as an ingredient a non-narcotic coca leaf extract prepared at a Stepan Company plant in Maywood, New Jersey.” (straight from wiki) But even the common man can import a kilo of leaves off the internet for I think usually around $50 - $80. It isn’t even that hard, searching Google will pull up several viable results in a matter of seconds. Many people use the leaves as an herbal tea of shorts; making a wonderful substitute to coffee (I hear it’s actually healthier too.) And guess how Meth is made most commonly? Through reactions starting with Ephedrine, coming from the Ephedra plant which contains about 1 – 3 % Yeah… You don’t need to own your own fields or planes or anything. You can easily get the leaves imported through companies already set up, like Fed Ex. Hell, lots of people already do so for their coca leaf needs.
I’ll give you extraction isn’t TRUE chemistry. Although when it comes to Cocaine Hcl from coca leaves, it’s much closer. Chemists really spend a lot of their time doing research and trying to come up with new compounds, not synthesizing them. They only do that once they want to do some research on one. And I don’t think extracting one of many chemicals from large piles of leaves and discarding all but that purified chemical can be considering “just cleaning some plants”.
I can SORT of see your agreement about the “chemistry teacher” thing. But still… I just don’t think it makes sense. Not only does it not make economic or logical sense, it just doesn’t sound like good entertainment. And how do they really plan to make a whole series out of this? Isn’t he doing it so that his family will have money for when he is dead? What if the first season does well? Are they going to keep him alive for another season every time ratings are high? Look, I’m not necessarily saying coke or crack would be the only options. But there are PLENTY of options that make a TON more sense than meth. Especially with all the recent crack down on laws regarding meth. It’s just silly…

Yeah well it's a rather old account name, and I had Mahatmaganja without a 420, but lost the password. So... I had to make this account.
Now, as for stupid noob... I’ve taken into account the cost of importing the coca leaves. It really isn’t that high when you do it in bulk. And while I can see where you’d think how you do, it isn’t impossible. It isn’t even close to impossible. Hell you know how much coca the Coca-Cola Company imports every single year? (Yup, surprise, they still import tons of it every year. One of the world’s largest importers of it) “To this day, Coca-Cola uses as an ingredient a non-narcotic coca leaf extract prepared at a Stepan Company plant in Maywood, New Jersey.” (straight from wiki) But even the common man can import a kilo of leaves off the internet for I think usually around $50 - $80. It isn’t even that hard, searching Google will pull up several viable results in a matter of seconds. Many people use the leaves as an herbal tea of shorts; making a wonderful substitute to coffee (I hear it’s actually healthier too.) And guess how Meth is made most commonly? Through reactions starting with Ephedrine, coming from the Ephedra plant which contains about 1 – 3 % Yeah… You don’t need to own your own fields or planes or anything. You can easily get the leaves imported through companies already set up, like Fed Ex. Hell, lots of people already do so for their coca leaf needs.
I’ll give you extraction isn’t TRUE chemistry. Although when it comes to Cocaine Hcl from coca leaves, it’s much closer. Chemists really spend a lot of their time doing research and trying to come up with new compounds, not synthesizing them. They only do that once they want to do some research on one. And I don’t think extracting one of many chemicals from large piles of leaves and discarding all but that purified chemical can be considering “just cleaning some plants”.
I can SORT of see your agreement about the “chemistry teacher” thing. But still… I just don’t think it makes sense. Not only does it not make economic or logical sense, it just doesn’t sound like good entertainment. And how do they really plan to make a whole series out of this? Isn’t he doing it so that his family will have money for when he is dead? What if the first season does well? Are they going to keep him alive for another season every time ratings are high? Look, I’m not necessarily saying coke or crack would be the only options. But there are PLENTY of options that make a TON more sense than meth. Especially with all the recent crack down on laws regarding meth. It’s just silly…

Goddam you're smart, but at the same time really fucking stupid. ACCEPT their fucking storyline, it's not that unbelievable. Meth cooks still make an assload of profit and it's much easier to do than importing ungodly amounts of coca leaves in order to sell them.

EDIT: And they've made like 3 seasons for Weeds, it's not that unimaginable that they could do that with this show. It's not that fucking hard to draw a show out over multiple seasons... Look what 24 did.

I accept everyone's apology, and thank you for admitting to my intelligence and vast knowledge. I'm willing to accept the lame story line idea; I've accepted most the other retarded shows on TV (My answer to that is not watching it, btw). I'm just saying it's unbelievable, that was all my point was. I realize meth cooks make good money, if they didn't they wouldn't be risking so much by doing it (unless they had a personal habit). And weeds is incomparable, it's a totally different idea and set of circumstances. On weeds they could technically keep going forever, on this show he's supposed to be about die... That sort of hinders their chances of doing that believably.

lol@noob totally missing wtf mahatma means

I'm sorry; let me rephrase that:
For a guy with "ganja", "420" and the Sanskrit equivalent of "saint" in his name, you sure are hyper.

:-p

“To this day, Coca-Cola uses as an ingredient a non-narcotic coca leaf extract prepared at a Stepan Company plant in Maywood, New Jersey.” (straight from wiki)

Yeah, if it's from Wikipedia it MUST be true.

That is actually not "straight from Wiki"; here is the original quote:
"To this day, Coca-Cola uses as an ingredient a coca leaf extract prepared by a Stepan Company plant in Maywood, New Jersey, using a process monitored by the Drug Enforcement Administration."

The sources (The New York Times and the Washington Times) seem to be pretty reliable.

But even the common man can import a kilo of leaves off the internet for I think usually around $50 - $80.

Actually, $50 will get you ~300 grams of coca leaf according to my Google results. If you buy it in tea bags it equates to 4g for $1; either way you will end up paying around $200 for a kilo of coca leaf. Fresh coca leaves contain anywhere between 0.1% and 0.9% cocaine (http://www.cocaine.org/cokleaf.html). With a liberal estimate of 0.9% cocaine content and 100% yield from a theoretically perfect extraction, that is 9 grams per kilo. Do the math - not a very big profit margin for such an effort. Realistically, yields would probably be much smaller (inefficient extraction and low coca leaf content comes to mind; Wikipedia cites a 0.2% figure but it's not cited), meaning a rapidly narrowing profit margin.

According to crack-cocaine.org, one kilo of cocaine was about 75% pure in 2000 and the statistics have remained fairly steady. Do the math real quick; even at $100/gram you are still only making about $200 net (assuming a halfway figure of .4-.5% cocaine content in the leaves), which is less than 50% profit. Note that I have discounted the weight of the HCl ion as its molar mass is 1/10th that of cocaine base.

Furthermore, cocaine production is not that simple. There is an intermediate form of cocaine between the leaf and the final product which is cocaine sulfate, called basa in the South American slums where it is usually found. Basically, you mix coca leaves with water and H2SO4, mash it up into a paste, and dry it.

From there, the basa is washed with kerosene, chilled, and evaporated. The resulting crystals are dissolved in methanol, evaporated, washed with sulfuric acid, and then undergo further purification procedures with oxidizing agents, benzene, and sodium carbonate. That is an AMAZINGLY simplified version of one of the more low-grade ways of producing cocaine hydrochloride illicitly. I suggest you read this (http://www.erowid.org/archive/rhodium/chemistry/cocaine.illicit.production.html) as it will clear up many of the misconceptions you seem to have about cocaine production.

By contrast, methamphetamine is produced by the reduction of pseudoephedrine or ephedrine (a reaction which is astoundingly less complicated than the cocaine production process) - both of which are available commercially for a very low price relative to coca leaves.

Unless you live in South America and are willing to undertake large-scale production (we are talking many, many kilos at once in order to be profitable), methamphetamine production will be many times more profitable to you.

And guess how Meth is made most commonly? Through reactions starting with Ephedrine, coming from the Ephedra plant which contains about 1 – 3 %

Yeah, but you can buy ephedrine and pseudoephedrine commercially, and they are dirt cheap compared to the cost of importing coca leaves.

Yeah… You don’t need to own your own fields or planes or anything.

Yes you do. Anything less than large-scale, full-time production is not profitable. Meth is something that you can make just a few batches of and STILL make a shit ton of money. The same can't be said for cocaine.

I’ll give you extraction isn’t TRUE chemistry.

What the hell? Of course it is. Even a simple organic phase acid-base extraction involves molar mass calculations to determine the required amount of solvent/acid/base relative to the substance you are extracting. Additionally you will almost always have to clean your precursors and your final product, as well as making multiple "passes" to make the yield worthwhile.

I'm curious - how do you define "true" chemistry? Extractions are usually a type of reaction if they are producing a salt from a free base - e.g. cocaine HCl from cocaine base. Does that count as chemistry? What about just dissolving something in a solvent and evaporating it - don't you have to know about chemistry to decide which solvent will solvate your desired product and not any nasties that occur along with it?

Although when it comes to Cocaine Hcl from coca leaves, it’s much closer.

Err, you can't really "extract" cocaine HCl. See, cocaine HCl is a salt produced from two separate chemicals - the cocaine base and hydrochloric acid. You need to do some chemistry to combine the two into a more practical form of cocaine.

Chemists really spend a lot of their time doing research and trying to come up with new compounds, not synthesizing them. They only do that once they want to do some research on one.

What? How do you come up with new compounds without synthesizing them? By extracting them? But I thought that wasn't true chemistry! Anyway, if it already exists in nature it's not really a "new" compound, is it?

And I don’t think extracting one of many chemicals from large piles of leaves and discarding all but that purified chemical can be considering “just cleaning some plants”.

This is true.

Not only does it not make economic or logical sense,

already addressed

But there are PLENTY of options that make a TON more sense than meth.

Cocaine isn't one of them. What else did you have in mind?

(MDMA is the only other synth I can think of off the top of my head that would be even remotely profitable on a less-than-colossal scale.)

I was going to spend a bunch of time coming up with responses to shoot you down, every step of your post (which would be fairly easy). But, my time is more important then that. I can't believe you're stupid enough to have wasted that much time on a post about a rediculous show, when my only point was that it was a retarded and unbelievable concept for a show... Get a life man...

T-zone posts: 3

mahatmaganja420 posts: 8

... ahem ...

I can't believe you're stupid enough to have wasted that much time posting about a ridiculous show, only pointing out that it was a retarded and unbelievable concept for a show... Get a life man...

Yeah, you're right... From now I'll just let idiots think they're right instead of proving them wrong. That's what everyone should be doing on this forum isn't it? Or wait... Isn't this forum about removing ignorance and preventing harm through shared knowledge? I don't know, it's hard to keep track when there are only 3 or 4 people on this forum who say things with any real value… For example, Obbe, that post totally was helpful in so many ways… I don’t know how the OP ever lived without it.

Yeah, if it's from Wikipedia it MUST be true.

That is actually not "straight from Wiki"; here is the original quote:
"To this day, Coca-Cola uses as an ingredient a coca leaf extract prepared by a Stepan Company plant in Maywood, New Jersey, using a process monitored by the Drug Enforcement Administration."

The sources (The New York Times and the Washington Times) seem to be pretty reliable.



Actually, $50 will get you ~300 grams of coca leaf according to my Google results. If you buy it in tea bags it equates to 4g for $1; either way you will end up paying around $200 for a kilo of coca leaf. Fresh coca leaves contain anywhere between 0.1% and 0.9% cocaine (http://www.cocaine.org/cokleaf.html). With a liberal estimate of 0.9% cocaine content and 100% yield from a theoretically perfect extraction, that is 9 grams per kilo. Do the math - not a very big profit margin for such an effort. Realistically, yields would probably be much smaller (inefficient extraction and low coca leaf content comes to mind; Wikipedia cites a 0.2% figure but it's not cited), meaning a rapidly narrowing profit margin.

According to crack-cocaine.org, one kilo of cocaine was about 75% pure in 2000 and the statistics have remained fairly steady. Do the math real quick; even at $100/gram you are still only making about $200 net (assuming a halfway figure of .4-.5% cocaine content in the leaves), which is less than 50% profit. Note that I have discounted the weight of the HCl ion as its molar mass is 1/10th that of cocaine base.

Furthermore, cocaine production is not that simple. There is an intermediate form of cocaine between the leaf and the final product which is cocaine sulfate, called basa in the South American slums where it is usually found. Basically, you mix coca leaves with water and H2SO4, mash it up into a paste, and dry it.

From there, the basa is washed with kerosene, chilled, and evaporated. The resulting crystals are dissolved in methanol, evaporated, washed with sulfuric acid, and then undergo further purification procedures with oxidizing agents, benzene, and sodium carbonate. That is an AMAZINGLY simplified version of one of the more low-grade ways of producing cocaine hydrochloride illicitly. I suggest you read this (http://www.erowid.org/archive/rhodium/chemistry/cocaine.illicit.production.html) as it will clear up many of the misconceptions you seem to have about cocaine production.

By contrast, methamphetamine is produced by the reduction of pseudoephedrine or ephedrine (a reaction which is astoundingly less complicated than the cocaine production process) - both of which are available commercially for a very low price relative to coca leaves.

Unless you live in South America and are willing to undertake large-scale production (we are talking many, many kilos at once in order to be profitable), methamphetamine production will be many times more profitable to you.



Yeah, but you can buy ephedrine and pseudoephedrine commercially, and they are dirt cheap compared to the cost of importing coca leaves.



Yes you do. Anything less than large-scale, full-time production is not profitable. Meth is something that you can make just a few batches of and STILL make a shit ton of money. The same can't be said for cocaine.



What the hell? Of course it is. Even a simple organic phase acid-base extraction involves molar mass calculations to determine the required amount of solvent/acid/base relative to the substance you are extracting. Additionally you will almost always have to clean your precursors and your final product, as well as making multiple "passes" to make the yield worthwhile.

I'm curious - how do you define "true" chemistry? Extractions are usually a type of reaction if they are producing a salt from a free base - e.g. cocaine HCl from cocaine base. Does that count as chemistry? What about just dissolving something in a solvent and evaporating it - don't you have to know about chemistry to decide which solvent will solvate your desired product and not any nasties that occur along with it?



Err, you can't really "extract" cocaine HCl. See, cocaine HCl is a salt produced from two separate chemicals - the cocaine base and hydrochloric acid. You need to do some chemistry to combine the two into a more practical form of cocaine.



What? How do you come up with new compounds without synthesizing them? By extracting them? But I thought that wasn't true chemistry! Anyway, if it already exists in nature it's not really a "new" compound, is it?



This is true.



already addressed



Cocaine isn't one of them. What else did you have in mind?

(MDMA is the only other synth I can think of off the top of my head that would be even remotely profitable on a less-than-colossal scale.)

Pwned.

Yeah, you're right... From now I'll just let idiots think they're right instead of proving them wrong.

What did you prove wrong? That, in your opinion, this show is retarded and unbelievable?

lol

This is a discussion about a fictional television show, and you've posted more then anybody who has bothered to post in this thread, simply about how unbelievable you find it to be. Thats ridiculous. How many television shows really are believable? How many aren't completely retarded?

For example, Obbe, that post totally was helpful in so many ways… I don’t know how the OP ever lived without it.

Tell me, what problems has the OP asked for advice on? What great words of wisdom shall we bestow upon him to relieve him of his burden?

Oh wait. He just wanted to bring the show to everyones attention, maybe stir up a little discussion. Although, I'm pretty sure that he didn't want some drama queen obsessing over the plausibility of the show which he apparently finds interesting, for the entire duration of his thread preventing any further positive discussion to take place.

Pretty sure he could've done without that. Yeah.

1. It's a TV show.
2. importing enough coca leaf to make a sizable amount of cocaine would raise suspicion.
3. he is a high school chem teacher, so he can probably easily acquire the ingredients for cooking up a batch of meth.
4. people would "relate" more to a show about a guy cooking meth in a trailer, compared to a guy running a cocaine operation in a lab.
5. its a fucking TV show.

stupid noob > mahatmaganja420

Pwned.

yup. x10

Isn't this forum about removing ignorance and preventing harm through shared knowledge?

Yeah, it is, so lay the knowledge on me, please! That's not a joke by the way; if I have shown any ignorance, take it as an INVITATION to correct me and share your knowledge. The only reason you won't is because I offended you when I did not agree with you, for which I apologize, because I did not set out to offend anyone. I'm only here to learn.

I "waste my time" doing stuff like this because I am a nerd. Yeah, I will admit it, I'M A BIG GEEK! I enjoyed chemistry class in high school, and I also enjoyed smoking joints on the walk there. To me, places like BLTC are where two of my favorite things meet up: drugs and science.

I'm not here to prove any sort of personal superiority. It's the Internet, for chrissakes. Arguing on the Internet is retarded. I'm here to share information, not to prove that my academic dick is bigger than yours. I think we can all agree that conducting ourselves with a certain level of maturity would make information exchange more efficient and reflect positively on the recreational drug using community.

If you are going to resort to personal attacks and insults, I'll just go somewhere else where there are people who actually want to inform and be informed instead of making childish remarks at each other. If you want to get down to brass tacks and actually have a discussion, I would be thrilled to stick around.

Love,
T

This some of the worst pwnage I've seen in BLTC for a long time. This thread actually revives my faith in community. I'm glad to see a few members could unite and crush an idiot with knowledge instead of calling him a faggot.

Bravo!

After reading A LOT (the Rhodium mirror on Erowid that I linked to earlier was the most helpful source) and cross-referencing with some of my oldest chemistry texts (I have long since forgotten the basics of isomerism and a few other things) I feel as though I now truly understand the entire cocaine production process.

There was a lot more stuff that I should have written in my original reply. Wow, I did not know that the cocaine plant contained so many hundreds of alkaloids. Perhaps I should have guessed that, since many plants do. Still, other extraction processes are usually extraordinarily simple - e.g. caffeine. Caffeine extraction is so extraordinarily simple that high school chemistry students can - and do! - do it as a lab! (link (http://departments.oxy.edu/tops/Caffeine/CAFFEINE-S.pdf)).

Cocaine extraction is one of the most complicated things I've ever seen. There are hundreds of individual procedures that must be performed to insure even only "kind of pure" cocaine as a result. Quite often, the coca leaves pass through three different clandestine labs before the final product is achieved. Hot piss! Direct "leaf-to-base" laboratories are more common because they are so much more profitable, but the coke base needs to be extracted further to get cocaine out of it. The extraction from the coke base to the final product is on the same scale as most of the simple extraction processes that some teenager might be able to do in his parents' basement (e.g. dextromethorphan).

Interestingly enough, in the synthesis of cocaine, the final step before cocaine is a chemical called ecgonine, which also happens to be a cocaine metabolite. This leads me to wonder if there isn't an easy way to extract ecgonine from aqueous solutions.

In fact, the way that some surveys determine the rate of cocaine use in a town is sometimes by testing the water supply for cocaine metabolites. Some opportunistic pharmaceutical company could possibly get those out and convert them quite easily (with the aid of pyridine and benzoyl chloride) to cocaine.

Just a thought that I had that I thought you all might appreciate hearing.

We seem to be keen on cocaine chemistry lately! :-)

I think you guys are forgetting the biggest aspect of all: This is a fucking teacher. Not some dude who's been on the streets and into the drug scene since he was 10. What's he gonna do? He'll do a little research, see what looks like his best option to make the most amount of money for the least amount of work, then act on it. Most people with book smarts don't know shit about common sense or street smarts.

T-zone: If it helps, I knew what you meant when you said a guy with 420 in his name is too hyper...I guess people don't know how to read and interpret.


And yes, what fucking tv show or movie isn't retarded or slightly unbelievable? You think a Golden Compass would really have magical powers, or a black guy from the streets would be teamed with up with an azn guy who can barely speak engrish? Come on noi.



Guys, please stop beeting this dead horse. Just watch the show and decide for yourself if you like it or not.

i think i will record it because i have to work tomorrow...

I hate to bump an old topic, but I also didnt feel like making a new thread since there is this one..

Anyways, I am watching the second episode right now and while I could care less about meth, I am enjoying this show so far.. I also like that the main character is the same guy who played "Hal" the father on Malcom in the middle.. Never thought id see him cookin meth and smokin joints haha

So far its pretty entertaining!

if all the episodes are as good as the first 2 the show will be one of the best ever on TV

I thought that was cool too, the Malcom dad cooking meth. I've seen both episodes, and its pretty entertaining.

I guess its probably as realistic as weeds, since the dad just "happens" to know the recipe for meth, like just because you study chemistry you know how to synthesize anything.

But whatever, its pretty good.

he could have easily done research, which i think he did while he was considering the ride along in the first episode

It's not hard to find an RPI synth write up out there.

Cook meth.
Die.
???
Profit!