The rest of my post, QV, was an explanation, in brief of quite WHY it makes bollocks all sense to have pharmacists on a bloody leash, yapping and rolling over on command. And having them play pig without badge.
One doesn't need ephedrine/pseudo to make meth. That red phosphorus/iodine (Nagai reduction) technique, its really a technique for end users, making for themselves, maybe a few family or friends, the odd party with hookers for those so inclined, in terms of scaling.
The real flood, is chinese pseudo being diverted or obtained legitimately via front companies belonging to mexican cartel bosses, in the US at least. And running mega-labs. They aren't fucking about extracting it from cold pills, they are buying it in the tonnage weights, and they sure as shit won't be using red phosphorus and iodine, it just wouldn't be economical, or easy to control. Probably a process like going via chloroephedrine and catalytic hydrogenation. with Urushibara nickel, maybe Raney nickel.
That's IF they'd be using pseudo at all, IMO it'd be far easier to go via P2P and methylamine, form the imine and reduce, again, at the scales seen in mexi-meth superlabs, probably reducing the intermediate imine via catalytic hydrogenation.
There's a million and one different ways to skin the cat, so to speak, when it comes to making P2P, it isn't difficult to accomplish, in fact, if you challenged me to do it, I could have it done within a few hours. Add another half hour or so if you said I make all my materials from the reagents I have to hand, right here, right now, rather than use ready made P2NP.
That does give a racemic product, going from the phenylacetone (P2P routes) rather than the D-meth formed as an enantiopure product from pseudo/eph as feedstock, but for those interested in quality over quantity then resolution of the product and recycling to form P2P again from the leftover laevo-methamphetamine (the sought after dopaminergic effects reside in the D-isomer of meth, of amphetamine and of ethylamphetamine, whilst the laevo-amphetamines are not recreational,they are just noradrenergic release-reuptake inhibitors) is possible by selective crystallization using naturally sourced tartaric acid (natural, plant, animal etc. systems tend to be chirally selective rather than producing racemic forms of biomolecules, it's almost always enantiopure in fact, if you're grabbing it from a biological source, whatever 'it' might be.
Or, hell, to avoid pseudoephedrine purchase, one could go via l-phenacetylcarbinol as the intermediate, produced via a biosynthesis, using benzaldehyde as the starting precursor, and using normal brewer's yeast. Ideally encapsulated in calcium alginate microspheres prepared from a perfluorocarbon-H2O emulsion to improve oxygen transport.
Something like 10g/liter is possible with the right technique, and the resulting amphetamines, would bee enantiopure. In fact I know of at least one Bee who is working on just that, who's done it using biosynthesis with immobilized yeast and benzaldehyde as feedstock. Benz is a bit hot to buy, although certainly a lot more available than the likes of red phosphorus (to most people), but it is used in synthetic almond essence. OR, one could buy paint strippers based on benzyl alcohol, the newer, more environmentally friendly crap we here in the UK are getting foisted on us instead of dichloromethane (bastards), and distill out the benzyl alcohol, followed by oxidizing it selectively to the aldehyde using activated manganese dioxide, which could be prepared from the manganese dioxide found in zinc-carbon type batteries, alkaline cells etc. Or for the more adventurous, using reactions like the Etard rxn, Collins reagent, the Jones oxidation, pyridinium chlorochromate, or, better than the Jones route, the Sarrett oxidation; to oxidize the benzyl alcohol to benzaldehyde.
At 10g product/liter, say you run ten, ten liter capacity fermenters with such a high efficiency process, thats 1kg right there. From benzaldehyde and yeast, plus nutrients, pyruvate, and vitamins, trace elements for the yeast to live on.
