History of Amphetamine and Methamphetamine

1Amphetamine was first synthesised in Germany in 1887. However, it was almost 30 years before a medical application was found for it at the end of the 1920s when the drug began to be widely used as an anti-depressant and a decongestant. It was also used to fight obesity, given that ephedrine — from which methamphetamine is produced — acts to reduce excess weight by stimulating thermogenesis. These qualities led to an explosion in the popular consumption of ephedrine products in some countries, particularly the United States.1

2Easier to produce and more powerful than amphetamine, as it acts in smaller doses, methamphetamine was first isolated either in Germany in 1888 or in Japan in 1919 (sources are still controversial).2 Metham- phetamine presents itself in the form of a crystalline powder soluble in water that users can take intravenously. This made it a rapid and effective method of consumption that some Southeast Asian consumers prefer even today.

3Methamphetamine use was common among various armies during the Second World War, and the drug remained a popular item with American soldiers during the Vietnam War. A veritable epidemic of methamphetamine consumption occurred among the general population in post-war Japan, and the American public also had unrestricted access to both amphetamine and methamphetamine as early as the 1950s. There, students, truck drivers, and athletes used it without any medical supervision. Eventually use of the drug plummeted, however, after the U.S. Controlled Substances Act of 1970 restricted the production of methamphetamine that could be injected intravenously.

4Methamphetamine can be found in Schedule B of the United Nations Convention on Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances3 under the category of “psycho-analeptic substances” or “stimulants of the central nervous system”, the latter also including hallucinogens, amphetamines, barbiturates and benzodiazepines. However, when methamphetamine is in a form that can be injected intravenously it is also included in Schedule A, which includes substances that are considered to be the most harmful and least useful from a medical standpoint.

Methamphetamine Production

5Methamphetamine4 can be produced from the extract of ephedrine, a phenethylamine5 kind of alkaloid as is mescaline from the peyote cactus (Lophophora williamsii Lemaire),6 cathine7 from the khat (Catha edulis Forskal), or even theobromine of cocoa beans (Theobroma cacao Linnaeus). It is contained in certain Ephedra, the only genus of the family of Ephedraceae of the order Ephedrales. The latter includes perennial xerophytic bushes or creepers that grow in dry tropical and temperate regions where they can reach a height of 45 to 120 cm. The plant has the austere look of species that live in extreme conditions. Its “woody stem, often underground, has aerial branches, that are green, thin and often easily broken at the nodes where are found two, three of four leaves reduced to sheathing scales”.8 Its yellow flowers are generally small in size.9 Ephedra grows on soil with good drainage, so it adapts well to rocky substrata and sandy slopes, and to open and particularly sunny areas of semi-arid regions. It is a plant difficult to cultivate and requires approximately four years to mature.

6The genus Ephedra is thought to have originated in Northern China and Mongolia, where one still finds the three species Ephedra sinica (Stapf), Ephedra intermedia (Schrenk and C.A. Mey) and Ephedra equisetina (Bunge).10 In addition, there are around 60 other varieties found in such places as the Indian subcontinent [Ephedra geradiana (Wall)], the deserts and steppes of Central Asia, and in the Americas where Ephedra nevadensis (Watson) and Ephedra viridis (Colville) were used to brew “Mormons’ Tea” and “Desert Tea” (or “Squaw Tea”), respectively.11 In Europe there is Ephedra distachya (Linnaeus). Sometimes called “sea grapes” or “joint grass” (as it cured arthritis), this plant grows notably well on the sand dunes of the Atlantic coast of France and is relatively toxic.

7It is, however, in the Middle East that the oldest sample of a variety of Ephedra was discovered. It was found in the Zagros Mountains of present-day northeastern Iraq near the banks of the Zarb, a tributary of the Tigris River. In 1951, Ralph and Rose Solecki carried out archeological research in the Shanidar caves, a site that was inhabited by Neanderthals 60,000 years ago during the Upper Pleistocene era.12 The excavation revealed that as far back as this era, funerary rites were far more elaborate than previously imagined, and could include inhuming plants such as Ephedra altissima (Desf), which was identified from its pollen by Arlette Leroi-Gourhan. The discovery of Ephedra in a Neanderthal tomb was, in and of itself, insufficient evidence to allow researchers to conclude that its properties as a stimulant and a cure for arthritis were known at this period. However, the presence of other plants having well-known medicinal properties in the tomb of Shanidar IV led Leroi-Gourhan to speculate that these properties must have been recognised by local inhabitants.13

8Ephedra sinica (Stapf), the variety commonly found in China under the name of mahuang (from ma, “astringent”, and huang, “of yellow colour”) is of particular interest here. The plant’s properties, related to its ephedrine and pseudo-ephedrine content, has led it to be used for medicinal purposes since at least 4,800 years ago. With it the Chinese treated many ailments, including colds, “hay fever”, asthma, bronchitis, arthritis, fever, and hypotension, as well as edemas and urticaria, excessive perspiration, headaches, urinary infections and venereal disease. Branches of Ephedra were sun-dried and then crushed into powder before being boiled in a mixture of water and honey. Similarly, inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent and North America have long taken this substance as a decoction, and still do so today. The Ephedra that are of greatest interest to us here have an overall alkaloid content of 0.5 to 2.5 per cent, among which the proportion of ephedrine, depending on the species, ranges from 30 to 90 per cent.

9More recently, and especially during the decade of the 1990s, the illegal production of methamphetamine has developed considerably, partly due to its advantages over heroin. For instance, agricultural constraints are relatively absent. Unlike those who cultivate opium poppies (or coca), amphetamine producers do not require a vast area dedicated to illicit production, where the vagaries of climate and eradication campaigns may endanger production. Furthermore, Ephedra, unlike the opium poppy, is not subject to legal restrictions of any kind. It is considered illicit only if misused.14

10Moreover, the number of precursors required for the production of ATS (amphetamine-type stimulants) is far fewer than those required for producing opium derivatives.15 Whereas transformation of opium can yield only one type of substance, this is not the case with ephedrine or Ephedra, which can also be transformed into methcathinone (ephedrone).16 Various ATS products can be obtained from the same key precursor, which can itself come from different pre-precursors. From sassafras oil, camphor or nutmeg, one can obtain safrole or piperonal, precursors of ecstasy; these substances can then be used to synthesize others which can, in turn, be used to produce either ecstasy or any of its analogues.17 Ephedrine can also be replaced by pseudo-ephedrine, an active principle widely used in nasal decongestants, and can even be obtained from benzaldehyde during the sugar-refining process.

11The process of chemically transforming amphetamine-type stimulants is far more flexible and a great deal less complex than the requirements for producing and refining heroin. Ephedrine, which was first isolated in 1887 by Japanese researchers S. Nagai and W. N. Kanao, who also synthesised it, is extracted with the help of sodium carbonate, along with other alkaloids of the plant (norephedrine, pseudo-ephedrine, or adrenaline). By adding hydrochloric acid, the alkaloids are transformed into hydrochlorides (chlorhydrate) before being dissolved in chloroform. Finally, after evaporation, the various alkaloids can be separated from each other according to the solubility of their oxalates. Alternatively, ephedrine can be obtained by a synthetic process also developed by Nagai and Kanao.18 As for amphetamine, it can be obtained from phenylacetic acid and then transformed into sulphate by the action of sulphuric acid, the latter a precursor and chemical product frequently used in the illicit production of narcotics and psychotropic substances.19 Methamphetamine hydrochloride can easily be obtained from ephedrine or pseudo-ephedrine and hydriodic acid.

12By virtue of the 1988 United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances, these two substances are subject to strict international controls. Hydriodic acid is necessary for manufacturing amphetamine derivatives; if not available, the acid can be created by combining iodine and red phosphorous, two products not subject to any legal controls. Phenyl-1-propanone-2 (P-2- P), or phenylpropanolamine, which is used in the pharmaceutical industry for the legal synthesis of amphetamine, methamphetamine, and some of its derivatives,20 can also be used as a precursor for manufacturing an amphetamine classified as a methamphetamine.21 Thus, according to a report of the International Narcotics Control Board in 1998, about 84 tons of P-2-P, which could be used to produce 40 tons of amphetamine, had been seized worldwide during the previous four years. In 1997, 141 tons of ephedrine and pseudo-ephedrine were intercepted in various countries.22

13It requires 1.6 tons of ephedrine, which can be obtained by pure synthesis, to produce one ton of methamphetamine.23 This amount can in turn produce around one million methamphetamine pills of 1.07g of active substance per single dose. Given the high risk of explosion from chemical reactions produced during the transformation process, amphetamine manufacturing is a dangerous activity — particularly so when carried out in laboratories located in the middle of urban areas. Potentially toxic product such as hydrochloric acid, battery acid, drain cleaning liquids, detergents, and anti-frost products are frequently used in yaa baa production.

14Thousands of recipes for producing methamphetamine or ecstasy are available on the Internet, revealing the simplicity of production techniques.24 And given the large areas of so-called “wild Ephedra” found in China and in Kazakhstan, plus growing ATS consumption, one can understand why drug traffickers already involved in the production of heroin are opting to move or diversify into the methamphetamine trade. “Easier”, more flexible, and cheaper than heroin production and trafficking, methamphetamine (yaa baa) is a rapidly developing “narcotic phenomenon” in Southeast Asia.25 Thus in the year 2000, the cost of producing a single methamphetamine pill in Burma was estimated at 3 cents of a US dollar. The same pill sold for the retail price of between 45 and 65 cents on the streets of Bangkok.26

15A single comparison here is apt: in 1994 the total quantity of ATS precursors seized on the Asian continent constituted only one per cent of seizures worldwide, while currently, in 2000, Asia closely follows North America and Europe in its volume of ATS traffic. As early as 1996 the United Nations Drug Control Programme (UNDCP) was presciently warning of a “growing diversification of the illicit drug industry in many regions, and, as it happens, in the Golden Triangle”.27