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They have to get a handle on this meth stuff! Its the same way here in Georgia, they are busting labs all over the place. It reminds me of the moonshine days where you couldn't buy large amounts of sugar at one time.

Any you really think this will help?

There are a few chemical engineering geniuses who are dopers. Every time in the last 30 years the Feds have cracked down on some ingredient in making meth, it has inspired them to come up with an even easier and cheaper method of making it without the 'crucial' ingredient.

In a year dopers won't be using Sudafed, meth will be more common and cheaper than ever, and cold sufferers will still be suffering from government stupidity.

So9

In a year dopers won't be using Sudafed, meth will be more common and cheaper than ever,

Economics suggests that if there were an easier, cheaper synthetic path with available ingredients, they'd be using it now.

The pseudoephedrine-to-meth synthesis is the most direct; it uses a variant of the Birch Reduction to reduce the -OH group on sudofed- that is all it takes.

The "superlabs" use a more complicated path involving hydroiodic acid and a phenyl ketone nicknamed P2K. The components of the P2K path are already difficult to get.

There are only a few economical ways to synthesize meth.

Likewise MDMA (Extacy)- once it became nearly impossible to get saffrole in the USA, domestic availability of E went down and it all comes from overseas now, where saffrole can be more readily obtained.

The difference between the two methods is described here

Here is an article on various ways to synthesize P2K, which you must make before you can do an aminative reduction on it to make methamphetamine.

The author makes the following statement:

Aside from the often amateurish reduction of (pseudo)ephedrine to methamphetamine, the most popular precursor to amphetamine and methamphetamine is phenyl-2-propanone (also called P2P, BMK, Benzyl Methyl Ketone or Phenylacetone). There is an astounding array of synthetic routes to this compound, both due to the relative simple structure of the compound, and also because of its popularity. Many of the earliest routes to the compound has been more or less abandoned due to restrictions on the pre-precursors used to make it, but there has always sprung up new methods of performing the feat of making this compound. Here is a collection of some of the possible methods of synthesizing phenyl-2-propanone, ranging from simple one-step methods to elaborate multi-step variants, and from the very easy to the very complicated

Most of the materials required are now difficult to get. He does state that people are always trying to come up with new paths to P2K, but if it is not cheap, fast, and easy it won't result in much meth being made.

The pseudoephedrine syntheses are very direct and can be done with stolen agricultural chemicals like anhydrous ammonia, and of course cold pills. The more steps you have in a synthesis the lower your yield, and your expenses go up, and you usually require more expensive gear, plus many more types of chemicals.

Restricting access to pseudoephedrine is being tried because the other synthetic pathways are more difficult, time consuming, and expensive, so just economically, the number of people who try to pick up on a P2K route will be limited. Will it work, and is it fair? I don't think it's fair to us normal people who just want to buy cold pills, no. Will it work? I don't know, but the people trying the move think so so maybe they have thought it out. I buy cold pills now when I don't need them, so I'll always have a bunch if I get a cold.

Just to be complete, once you have synthesized a batch of P2K, this is what you need to do to convert to meth. Note that it requires methylamine, a restricted chemical that you cannot get at Walgreen's.