Read Online Scattered by Malcolm Knox - Free Book Online
Authors: Malcolm Knox
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But like the American drug crackdowns, this one only motivated the ingenuity of manufacturers and drove them to more potent and easily concocted variants. In 1997, injecting drug users told Rebecca McKetin at NDARC that some Queensland manufacturers had found a way of cooking speed in smaller labsâthe size of a box rather than a roomâwhich would do the job faster and produce a higher yield. They were using pseudoephedrine, from common flu and sinus tablets like Sudafed and Sinutab, as the vital precursor chemical. To obtain the large quantities of the tablets needed, manufacturers paid âpseud runnersâ to drive up and down the east coast picking up a few packets at a time from pharmacies until they had big commercial loads. The output of the pseudoephedrine lab wasnât old-style amphetamineâit was methamphetamine. And this revolution in manufacture in the late 1990s was the single most important catalyst to what was tagged, after the turn of the century, as the new âice ageâ.
The difference, both chemically and subjectively, between methamphetamine and amphetamine sulphate is small yet significant. Methamphetamine is what it sounds likeâ amphetamine with a methyl molecule added on. Some researchers believe the methyl molecule slightly enhances the amphetamineâs crossover from the blood to the brain. Some users have reported a slightly smoother, faster high. But this probably owes more to the purity and the rapidity of ingestion, both of which rose when smokable meth came onto the market. Chemically, methamphetamine and amphetamine are essentially the same stimulant.
Among users, the key difference in promoting ice as fashionable, as opposed to nasty old speed, was twofold. First was the purity. Second was the method of administering it.
Speed had always come in three forms: powder, tablet and liquid. For decades it was taken in pill form, or injected. Then, from the 1980s, novice users might snort it, an experience that was somewhat less efficient than injection and often quite painful, due to the impurities cut into the street drug. Less efficient still was sprinkling it onto a marijuana coneâa âsnow coneâ. But snow cones (which might also involve cocaine or heroin) were more socially acceptable for the casual user than injecting. Thousands of drug users who will put anything into their body, every day for years and years, refuse steadfastly to use a needle. There is the fear of blood-borne infections and the queasiness about penetrating the skin, which many people simply find impossible to do. There is also a superstitious, semi-mystical revulsion about, in Neil Youngâs lyric, âthe needle and the damage doneâ. Injecting, the most efficient pathway to a high, has always been a marginal practice.
The crossover in manufacture from amphetamine to methamphetamine introduced a ritual of taking the drug that was more acceptable than injecting yet almost as efficient. âThere are lots of young drug users who think theyâre not going to put a needle in their arm but, if someone is handing round a glass pipe with a bit of crystal in it and all [their] friends are smoking it, that doesnât seem so scary,â Rebecca McKetin says.
Crystalline methamphetamine is not actually âsmokedâ, in the way tobacco and marijuana combust in a flame. In an âiceâ pipe, the crystals are placed in a chamber, usually glass, and heated by an external flame. The flame doesnât oxidise the crystals, but causes them to vaporise. By drawing back on the stem of the pipe, the user is inhaling not smoke but methamphetamine vapour.
In Australia, ice pipes were emerging alongside methamphetamine around 1997. Compared with amphetamine, meth seizures were gradually creeping up. In 1997, the Australian Federal Police reported that for every 100 seizures of amphetamine, there were 79 of meth. In 1998 that rose to 83. In 1999 it rose to 89. The
But like the American drug crackdowns, this one only motivated the ingenuity of manufacturers and drove them to more potent and easily concocted variants. In 1997, injecting drug users told Rebecca McKetin at NDARC that some Queensland manufacturers had found a way of cooking speed in smaller labsâthe size of a box rather than a roomâwhich would do the job faster and produce a higher yield. They were using pseudoephedrine, from common flu and sinus tablets like Sudafed and Sinutab, as the vital precursor chemical. To obtain the large quantities of the tablets needed, manufacturers paid âpseud runnersâ to drive up and down the east coast picking up a few packets at a time from pharmacies until they had big commercial loads. The output of the pseudoephedrine lab wasnât old-style amphetamineâit was methamphetamine. And this revolution in manufacture in the late 1990s was the single most important catalyst to what was tagged, after the turn of the century, as the new âice ageâ.
The difference, both chemically and subjectively, between methamphetamine and amphetamine sulphate is small yet significant. Methamphetamine is what it sounds likeâ amphetamine with a methyl molecule added on. Some researchers believe the methyl molecule slightly enhances the amphetamineâs crossover from the blood to the brain. Some users have reported a slightly smoother, faster high. But this probably owes more to the purity and the rapidity of ingestion, both of which rose when smokable meth came onto the market. Chemically, methamphetamine and amphetamine are essentially the same stimulant.
Among users, the key difference in promoting ice as fashionable, as opposed to nasty old speed, was twofold. First was the purity. Second was the method of administering it.
Speed had always come in three forms: powder, tablet and liquid. For decades it was taken in pill form, or injected. Then, from the 1980s, novice users might snort it, an experience that was somewhat less efficient than injection and often quite painful, due to the impurities cut into the street drug. Less efficient still was sprinkling it onto a marijuana coneâa âsnow coneâ. But snow cones (which might also involve cocaine or heroin) were more socially acceptable for the casual user than injecting. Thousands of drug users who will put anything into their body, every day for years and years, refuse steadfastly to use a needle. There is the fear of blood-borne infections and the queasiness about penetrating the skin, which many people simply find impossible to do. There is also a superstitious, semi-mystical revulsion about, in Neil Youngâs lyric, âthe needle and the damage doneâ. Injecting, the most efficient pathway to a high, has always been a marginal practice.
The crossover in manufacture from amphetamine to methamphetamine introduced a ritual of taking the drug that was more acceptable than injecting yet almost as efficient. âThere are lots of young drug users who think theyâre not going to put a needle in their arm but, if someone is handing round a glass pipe with a bit of crystal in it and all [their] friends are smoking it, that doesnât seem so scary,â Rebecca McKetin says.
Crystalline methamphetamine is not actually âsmokedâ, in the way tobacco and marijuana combust in a flame. In an âiceâ pipe, the crystals are placed in a chamber, usually glass, and heated by an external flame. The flame doesnât oxidise the crystals, but causes them to vaporise. By drawing back on the stem of the pipe, the user is inhaling not smoke but methamphetamine vapour.
In Australia, ice pipes were emerging alongside methamphetamine around 1997. Compared with amphetamine, meth seizures were gradually creeping up. In 1997, the Australian Federal Police reported that for every 100 seizures of amphetamine, there were 79 of meth. In 1998 that rose to 83. In 1999 it rose to 89. The
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