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Bridgeburner
Not spiritual at all.




Registered: 09/16/06
Posts: 20,010
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Guatemala bans chemical in drug crackdown
#9784167 - 02/12/09 10:26 AM (15 years, 6 days ago) |
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Guatemala has banned a common ingredient in over-the-counter cold medicine to crack down on clandestine labs using it to make illegal drugs like ecstasy and methamphetamine, the country's vice president said on Wednesday.
The substance, pseudoephedrine, can be mixed with other chemicals to make a powerful addictive stimulant that has grown into a major drug problem in the United States.
Under the ban, pharmacies with stocks of cold medicine containing pseudoephedrine have until April 15 to sell them legally before the supply is confiscated and burned.
Authorities this week detained a boat carrying 20 million cold medicine pills and a planeload of another 5 million pills, both sent from Colombia.
Drug producers sometimes mix pseudoephedrine into ecstasy pills to give them a cheap kick.
Guatemala is being increasingly sucked into the drug trade centered in neighboring Mexico.
Last week police found 20 homemade laboratories producing methamphetamine in garages and houses in Guatemala City, Vice President Rafael Espada told Reuters in an interview.
"I imagine they are producing thousands of pills a day, both for local use and for exportation," Espada said of the drug syndicates working in his country.
Guatemala is a major transshipment point for South American cocaine on its way to the United States. Mexican gangs operate with local partners to smuggle the drugs over the porous Mexico-Guatemala border.
Marijuana and poppies used to make heroin have long been grown illegally in Guatemala's mountainous northern region but methamphetamine manufacturing is relatively new to the country, Espada said.
The pseudoephedrine crackdown is latest step in an anti-drug campaign by President Alvaro Colom. Last week security forces torched 1,700 acres of fields growing marijuana and heroin poppies in the country's biggest ever drug sweep.
Mexican cartels are the largest producer of methamphetamine for the U.S. market, processing huge amounts of the drug in secret labs. The Mexican government took similar steps to ban pseudoephedrine several years ago, but the ban failed to halt production or trafficking in methamphetamine.
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clover606
Stranger

Registered: 08/13/07
Posts: 656
Last seen: 10 years, 4 months
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Re: Guatemala bans chemical in drug crackdown [Re: Bridgeburner]
#9784272 - 02/12/09 10:51 AM (15 years, 6 days ago) |
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why was ecstasy mentioned? pseudoephedrine is in no way involved in MDMA production..
-------------------- grassman said: I remember being in DARE when i was much younger and some of the stories they would tell you are not only ridiculous, but completely untrue. One story was that a woman was on LSD and thought her infant was a turkey so she baked it in the oven. Now I look back and think thats hilarious, but at the time I guess it scared me.
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bbl337
genetic material is Ar based



Registered: 02/12/09
Posts: 7,008
Last seen: 9 years, 1 month
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Re: Guatemala bans chemical in drug crackdown [Re: clover606]
#9784372 - 02/12/09 11:16 AM (15 years, 6 days ago) |
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You'd be surprised how many people think meth can be turned into MDMA. If you don't have an understanding of chemistry, I could see how you would think that, but it's far from fact.
That having been said, banning pseudoephedrine won't do a a thing. Doesn't the country have natural ephedrine sources? I'm pretty sure it does.
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Invisible_Woe


Registered: 05/25/07
Posts: 11,707
Loc: Mabase
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Re: Guatemala bans chemical in drug crackdown [Re: bbl337]
#9786812 - 02/12/09 06:59 PM (15 years, 6 days ago) |
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well still, its a good way to slow down methamphetamine production. the thought of trying to get rid of any drug completely is ridicules. you cant control people and what they do therefor you cant stop them from making drugs...so why try?!?! Prime example....opium how long has it been illegal/outlawed? and its STILL A "PROBLEM"! If you have been trying to get rid of a drug for 100's of years (i assume at least) and it hasn't worked out..............i'd think about giving up
-------------------- These are not the answers you should be questioning.
Edited by Invisible_Woe (02/12/09 07:02 PM)
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