That’s why pharmacuetical companies invented it in the first place. Crazy easy to produce and crazy more potent than previous opiods, so it is an absolute money printer
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
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.
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.
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.
Hopefully the same idiots who notice and try (who also read Reuters) are so bad at their first time of making pharmaceuticals that they don’t have product - only expenses.
And that’s ignoring any law enforcement who start to take notice of the precursor ingredients. Wanna guess how many RVs in the desert became suspicious to law enforcement after Breaking Bad? Showing folks how to do stuff works for both sides.