Kennedy’s speech was also inspirational. I have to admit that I am coming to be a part of the Artist Project, and was interested in it primarily to get back “home” after about a million years and get to meet a bunch of you people face to face (the Sharkforum crew, the BAS folks and others) — but after listening to Kennedy I got really excited about the potential of the fair and the City again. Made me feel kind of Windy-City-boosterish-patriotic for a while. I hope it goes great! Congratulations to Mr Kennedy as well.

Your house is the perfect locale, no one will be able to tell the cat pee from the cat pee smell!!!

Awesome.

R

What a stellar fundraiser. The shark has lots of space we could do some serious hydroponic farming in there, a huge art community industry could arise!!!

Then we can raise an army using the funds derived from our business and crush all opposition.

Victory will be ours!!!!

to wit:

Methamphetamine is most structurally similar to methcathinone and amphetamine. When illicitly produced, it is commonly made by the reduction of ephedrine or pseudoephedrine. Most of the necessary chemicals are readily available in household products or over-the-counter cold or allergy medicines. Synthesis is relatively simple, but entails risk with flammable and corrosive chemicals, particularly the solvents used in extraction and purification. Clandestine production is therefore often discovered by fires and explosions caused by the improper handling of volatile or flammable solvents.

Most methods of illicit production involve hydrogenation of the hydroxyl group on the ephedrine or pseudoephedrine molecule. The most common method for small-scale methamphetamine labs in the United States is primarily called the “Red, White, and Blue Process”, which involves red phosphorus, pseudoephedrine or ephedrine(white), and blue iodine, from which hydroiodic acid is formed.

This is a fairly dangerous process for amateur chemists, because phosphine gas, a side-product from phosphorus production, is extremely toxic to inhale. An increasingly common method uses the process of Birch reduction, in which metallic lithium (commonly extracted from rechargeable batteries) is substituted for metallic sodium, to circumvent the difficulty of procuring metallic sodium.

The Birch reduction, however, is dangerous because the alkali metal and liquid anhydrous ammonia are both extremely reactive, and the temperature of liquid ammonia makes it susceptible to explosive boiling when reactants are added. Anhydrous ammonia and lithium or sodium (Birch reduction) may be surpassing hydroiodic acid (catalytic hydrogenation) as the most common method of manufacturing methamphetamine in the US and possibly in Mexico. Hydroiodic acid “super lab busts” receive more media attention because the equipment employed is much more complex and visible than the glass jars or coffee carafes commonly used to produce methamphetamine with Birch reduction.
Industrial scale methamphetamine/MDMA factory in Cikande, Indonesia
Industrial scale methamphetamine/MDMA factory in Cikande, Indonesia

A completely different procedure of synthesis uses the reductive amination of phenylacetone with methylamine, both of which are currently DEA list I chemicals (as are pseudoephedrine and ephedrine). The reaction requires a catalyst that acts as a reducing agent, such as mercury-aluminum amalgam or platinum dioxide, also known as Adams’ catalyst. This was once the preferred method of production by motorcycle gangs in California,[citation needed] until DEA restrictions on the chemicals have made this difficult. Other less common methods use other means of hydrogenation, such as hydrogen gas in the presence of a catalyst.

One obvious sign of an operating Meth lab is an odor similar to that of cat urine. Meth labs can also give off noxious fumes, such as phosphine gas, mercury vapors, lead, methylamine gas, solvent fumes; such as acetone or chloroform, iodine vapors, white phosphorus, anhydrous ammonia, hydrogen chloride/muriatic acid, hydrogen iodide, lithium/sodium metal, ether, or methamphetamine vapors. If performed by amateurs, manufacturing methamphetamine can be extremely dangerous. If the red phosphorus overheats, because of a lack of ventilation, phosphine gas can be produced. This gas, if present in large quantities, is likely to explode upon autoignition from diphosphine, which is formed by overheating phosphorus.

Until the early 1990s, methamphetamine for the US market was made mostly in labs run by drug traffickers in Mexico and California. Since then, authorities have discovered increasing numbers of small-scale methamphetamine labs all over the United States, mostly in rural, suburban, or low-income areas. The Indiana state police found 1,260 labs in 2003, compared to just 6 in 1995, although this may be a result of increased police activity.[10] Recently, mobile and motel-based methamphetamine labs have caught the attention of both the US news media and the police.

These labs can cause explosions and fires, and expose the public to hazardous chemicals. Those who manufacture methamphetamine are often harmed by toxic gases. Many police departments have specialized task forces with training to respond to cases of methamphetamine production. The National Drug Threat Assessment 2006, produced by the Department of Justice, found “decreased domestic methamphetamine production in both small and large-scale laboratories”, but also that “decreases in domestic methamphetamine production have been offset by increased production in Mexico.” They concluded that “methamphetamine availability is not likely to decline in the near term.”