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LSD stands for Lysergic Acid Diethylamide,
and is
one of the most famous of illegal drugs.
It was actually discovered back in 1943
by a Swiss pharmaceutical chemist called
Albert Hofmann
and he discovered that it had a potent
effect on the central nervous system,
again, by accident.
LSD is a semi-synthetic, it's a
semi-synthetic
derivative of alkaloids found in rivea
corymbosa.
It had great popularity back in the 1960s,
now it's relatively uncommon.
Probably the main reason for it being
uncommon, is
that other semi-synthetics are much easier
to make than LSD.
It's a potent hallucinogen, and it
works by disrupting communication between
the neurons.
LSD itself probably never killed anyone,
but there
have been numerous fatalities arising due
to LSD usage.
The reason for these fatalities is that
some people, after taking LSD,
believe they have the ability to fly,
which of course they don't.
Nowadays, probably the major threat from
semi-synthetic drugs is from the
amphetamines.
As you can see, they're much simpler
structures than LSD
and therefore, they're much easier to make
in backwards, illegal laboratories.
There are various recipes for how to make
different amphetamines that are available,
and forensic scientists can work out which
method was used for a particular sample of
amphetamines by looking at the
characteristic impurities
that are left over from the synthetic
group.
One way to control the amphetamine
business of course
is to hunt out the laboratories and shut
them down.
That's not easy
and many countries nowadays operate what
is called precursor control.
There are certain starting materials that
are used in these roots
to make amphetamines, and the authorities
watch to see who is buying
these starting materials, and if those
people can't give a good
reason for buying those chemicals, then
they may be in some trouble.
Now the amphetamines do have some natural
relatives.
For instance, this compound here is called
cathinone.
And cathinone is present in the leaves of
this plant which is called Qat.
And this is widely chewed in the whole
of Africa and the Middle East,
particularly Yemen.
It's a particular problem for this part of
the world because to grow this plant,
a lot of water is required, and none of
these countries have very much water.
It's chewed fresh and that is because
cathinone, the active ingredient, is not
very stable.
So if you dry the plant, for instance,
you'll lose that active ingredient.
Qat is illegal in a number of countries,
for
instance, it's illegal in the United
States of America.
So people from this part of the world, if
they're
travelling to the United States, can't take
the material with them.
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Ketamine is quite different to the
compounds we've talked
to so far because it is a purely synthetic
compound.
It was introduced some years ago as an
anaesthetic.
But after being used as an anaesthetic for
awhile, all human use of this material was
stopped.
And that is because of it's side effects.
For instance there was one little boy who
was given ketamine
as an anaesthetic before an operation, who
then hallucinated for the next three days.
So nowadays it's no longer used as
a human anaesthetic, but it's still in
veterinary use.
Whether or not animals can hallucinate,
we really don't know.
Ketamine gets on the illegal drugs market
mainly when
it is stolen from veterinary supply
companies or veterinarians.
It's a hallucinogen.
It also affects memory, it affects
sensation, it affects
mood, it causes delirium, it causes
amnesia and depression.
The fact that it causes amnesia means
that it's been used in cases of date rape.
Ketamine may be in a solid form, it may be
in a liquid form, it may be ingested,
it may be smoked, it may be injected, and
whichever way, it's a dangerous material.
We've talked briefly about the concept of
analogs,
in that heroin is an analog of morphine.
And that etorpine, for instance, is also
an analog of morphine.
So here's desomorphine.
It's made from morphine, it's more potent
than morphine,
but it's not readily available to illegal
users.
On the other hand, here's codeine.
Codeine may be made from morphine, or it
may be extracted directly from opium.
And codeine in most countries is
relatively easy
to obtain because it's used in cold
medicines.
It's nowhere near as active as morphine,
and so
in many countries, codeine containing
medicines are available over the counter.
You can convert codeine to desomorphine.
You need to remove one carbon atom and one
oxygen atom, and add a few hydrogen atoms.
One way to do this is a recipe that's
available on the street,
which is to treat codeine with iodine, red
phosphorus, hydrochloric acid, and a
solvent such as gasoline or oil.
Now iodine of course, you can easily get
from pharmacists'
shop because iodine is used as a
disinfectant for wounds.
Red phosphorus you can obtain because it's
present in the heads of
matches, so you can scratch it off the
match heads and use that.
And hydrochloric acid can also be
obtained.
So, in some countries particularly Russia,
drug
addicts are taking codeine containing
medicines, cooking them
up with this appalling brew here to
make something very potent, because it
contains desomorphine.
In Russia, this is known as Krokodil.
The reason it's called Krokodil is that,
when it is injected
into a vein, it causes enormous damage to
the tissues.
The damage is probably not caused by the
desomorphine, but it's caused
by all the other chemicals and by-products
that are produced in this reaction.
The skin becomes hard and scaly like the
skin of a crocodile, hence the name
Krokodil.
There are
apparently many users in Russia.
It's extraordinarily addictive.
Once people start taking Krokodil, they
will take it continuously until
perhaps, they run out of iodine or red
phosphorous or cough mixture.
Most disturbingly, Krokodil now seems to
be spreading to
other countries around the world,
including the United States.
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Now, let's look at analogs.
Here again is the structure of
diamorphine, which as
you know, is an analog of the natural
compound morphine.
Diamorphine is illegal.
Now, look at this compound here.
That's not diamorphine.
It has one extra carbon atom, so
chemically and legally, it is not
diamorphine.
But, it would be just as effective as
diamorphine,
because the two ester groups that have
been added would
be cleaved off in vivo, and morphine would
be released and have its normal effect.
So if you make diamorphine illegal, and
you
specifically say diamorphine is illegal,
diamorphine is diacetylmorphine,
this chemical here just as effective,
would
not be covered by that legal definition.
How can we deal with this issue?
In principle, illegal chemical
laboratories could modify drug
molecules in very simple ways to avoid the
law.
So as long as these illegal laboratories
stay ahead of
the law, then these so-called designer
drugs are perfectly legal.
What are the solutions?
One solution is to control specific
compounds as they become a problem.
When the drug control agencies find these
compounds
on the street, then they can go back
to the lawyers and the politicians, and
have
them made illegal. That of course takes
time.
You could control particular classes of
compound.
So instead of saying a compound is
illegal, you
could say all compounds in this class are
illegal.
So in the case of heroin, diamorphine, all
esters of morphine were made illegal in
most countries many, many years ago.
Ban the whole class.
The danger of this, is that in banning the
whole class,
you may actually be banning something in
there that is useful.
So as you saw, some countries make
exceptions.
The U.K. for instance still allows heroin
in very specific situations.
The other possibility is to pass a law
particular, specifically banning analogs.
So you could pass a law saying this
compound is illegal, and all its analogs
are illegal.
The difficulty then, is defining what is an
analog.
In particular, you have to find a way to
define analogs, which is understandable by
the legal profession.
So what is understandable as an analog by
a medicinal chemist
and by a judge in a court, may be
completely different things.
For instance, dimethyltryptamine, DMT.
It's a naturally occurring compound, in
many
countries including the United States, it
is illegal.
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What about DET?
Diethyltryptamine, it's a synthetic
compound.
It differs from DMT in the fact that it
has
two additional carbon atoms on the
substituents on the nitrogen.
Well, looking at the two structures here,
I think any
reasonable person would see they are very,
very similar and DET
must indeed be an analog of DMT and under
the Federal Analog
Act, DET would be just as illegal as DMT.
What about this one?
AET,
and you can see, it's very similar to DMT,
but
it's different because the atoms around
the nitrogen are different.
So, AET, alpha-ethyltryptamine, is a
synthetic compound. As an analog of DMT,
is it illegal in the eyes of the law?
Well, DMT is specifically controlled.
DET, even though it is an analog, is also
specifically controlled.
What about AET?
Is that controlled because it's an analog?
Well probably any medicinal chemist
looking at the structure
would say, yes, AET is an analog of DET.
But when this went to district court, the
court said no, the structure
is too different in the eyes of the law,
it's not an analog,
and so that case was dismissed.
But now AET is specifically controlled.
So, modern synthetic chemistry has
given
us lots of compounds with remarkable
properties,
and we've benefited from them in terms of
the pharmaceuticals now available to us.
But we pay the price, because it also
gives an
opportunity to the makers and sellers of
these illegal drugs.
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