Here's some feedback on my post about attempts to prevent meth makers from stealing fertilizer by staining it pink:
Anonymous BB reader sez: "I've got 10+ years clean & sober now, but I can tell you that crystal meth already comes in
almost any color you can imagine. Most of it is the same pale yellow or translucent, but there
used to be several "neon" colors that were quite the novelty."The part about hard to dry might be a deterrant, but the second part about wanting a clean
looking drug? HAHAHAHAHA just like you said, it's not going to make one bit of difference. Have
you seen tar heroin? That stuff is like pure thick gooey oil, who knows what they cut it with?
and as far as the 1000's of varieties of meth, there are very very few speed freaks who can
afford to care what the drug looks like. It's cut with all manner of nasty, dirty junk."If anything, the dealers will say it's stronger, cut back on the filler for a few weeks, and
people will pay a premium for it. I'm not an expert or anything, never did make a drug, just
used them a bunch. But like I said, 10+ years clean."
UPDATE A BB reader sent in this odd story about pink speed:
I live a ways outside Ft. Lewis in Washington state, and the following happened a few years back.
I was at a large, mostly punk house-party when a nervous-looking kid with a flat-top showed up. The party immediately became quiet because he was utterly vanilla-looking and built like a brick shithouse. He then began to ask quietly if anyone "wanted some drugs." He was laughed out of the house, pegged as an undercover cop. A while later my friends and I were sitting on the front porch, in the dark, when the kid reappeared. He asked some other people on the porch, again, if they wanted some drugs. He then insisted that he had to get rid of it quickly, which caused pretty similar reactions to the first time he offered. For some reason we started asking him a lot of questions, and point blank told him that we pegged him as an undercover cop. The resulting story was pretty strange.
He told us he was in the Army and then produced his military ID. It looked pretty real and put him at 20 years old. He told is that he was assigned to the infirmary as an assistant when he entered, and he did so well the first year that they started letting him do more on his own. Long story short, he discovered that the Army was packing it's own gelcaps with "supplements" to distribute to the troops, and he had access to the bulk packages of those "supplements." Well, it didn't take him very long one night to test the "energy supplements" with a military grade urine-analysis kit for drugs, resulting in a definite positive for methamphetamines. We all laughed at his story, since of course the military is jacking everyone up with speed, and then the kid dropped this bomb: in a recent shipment, there was an unaccounted for unit of the "energy supplements." He stole it.
I'm not generally a sucker for stories like that, but he seemed to be, at least, truly nervous about something. One of my friends asked "So where is it?" and the kid produced a small packet of *neon pink* crap, this strange, slightly damp, almost granular powder that smelled like poison. He said they dyed it pink so that it was readily identifiable, and so that no one would use it for any method but oral. He said the remainder of the *pound* was in his car, and he'd go get it if we wanted to buy it. He then asked us how much meth went for. Well, we were stumped, not being connoiseurs ourselves, and said thanks but no thanks. He left.
A few days later, talking to some friends of mine that had been at the party, he said that they had actually *purchased* some of the meth and had done it and, indeed, it had been the cleanest, most frighteningly powerful speed they had ever taken, but it had dyed their fingers and noses pink, so they had tossed it. I was baffled and delighted at the same time (wowee, conspiracy theories!).
So imagine me reading the link that they want to "start dying" the fertilizer. It's been done for a while now, it appears, and with some success, but not for civilians. Also, in the case of my associates, the drugs being pink was a deterrent. Then again, they were never addicts.
