MethamphetamineMethamphetamineMethamphetamine has been a drug which has continually plagued mankind over the 120 years of its existence. Meths cousin, amphetamine, was first synthesized in 1887 in Germany by Lazar Edeleanu, a Romanian chemist. At first, amphetamine was considered a rather useless chemical byproduct of ephedrine. Amphetamine did not really come into its own until the 1920s. It came to be regarded as a miracle drug with the potential to cure a wide variety of medical conditions. Commercially marketed as Benzedrine, it was mainly intended to clear nasal congestion. Soon, the drug was used by otherwise healthy people simply for its intense high. Amphetamines were also widely used in WW2 as a means of reinvigorating fatigued soldiers. The combination of widespread military use and the voluminous amounts of the drug which became military surplus after the war led to a boom in amphetamine abuse.
All of this was a precursor to methamphetamine; amphetamine heralded the way for its more lethal and somewhat newer relative. Actually, methamphetamine was quite old itself. The crystalline chemical, easily dissolvable in water, had been first created in Japan in 1919. Much easier to make and much more potent, meth tablets came into widespread use during the 50s and started to supplant amphetamines in habitual drug users. During the 60s, injectable methamphetamine took the abuse of the drug to new heights. Such widespread proliferation of the drug worried the government, which included it in the 1970 Controlled Substances act. Methamphetamine was now illegal.
The production of methamphetamine is both very profitable and very dangerous. The price has been devaluated to “only” $3000/ pound due to the increased output of illegal laboratories, but still the allure of easy money has proved too much for many people. The most common way is through the “Red, White, and Blue” process involving phosphorous, pseudoephedrine, and iodine, respectively. These chemicals are then mixed in a poisonous stew which creates hydroiodic acid, which undergoes more processing to become methamphetamine. This form of production is very popular because these chemicals are easily available either in household products or in over the counter cold medicine. Nonetheless, the seeming simplicity of manufacture is tinged with lethality as phosphine gas, a product of the phosphorous ingredient, is exceedingly toxic and flammable.
There is, however, a popular alternative, no less dangerous, process called Birch Reduction. It is an improvised modification of a process devise by Arthur Birch, a renowned Australian chemist. The modifications include the substitution of lithium, procured from batteries, for much rarer metallic sodium. The lithium is then combined with liquid anhydrous ammonia to create unrefined methamphetamine. The risk factor is enormous; both of the compounds used are extremely reactive with one another. Thus, it comes down to which kind of death the producers prefer more: a fiery explosion or painless asphyxiation with a side dish of incineration, besides the more mundane economic factors which influence what method is used.
The resulting effect in short is a massive and dangerous form of violence. The risk factor is considerable. Its total impact on the economic well-being of the population is massive. And as a result the consequences of a violent act become less and less frequent. In many cases, the perpetrators receive less than $10,000 in social services or the social security system.
But this does not mean this criminal activity can never be done. It really can’t be done, it always would have to happen in the future. And it has always been a reality with real consequences for the communities of those responsible for it, and the law will always apply if it is needed to protect future generations from the danger of becoming victims of an accidental criminal activity.
If, however, as in many other areas of our world, the perpetrators of violent acts are often the real, it is because those responsible for them choose to act out of a “perceived sense of evil”. Such a conscious or unconscious response to the perceived possibility, or even the possibility’s value, that a particular act is dangerous is very different from an unconscious response to the possibility which that act results on the society.
Some may be surprised to find out that this difference exists. If the real thing is morally unjustified, then it is wrong. To the extent it is morally justified, it is just as wrong or even, at least, it is not morally wrong at all.
But if the actual objective is the obvious injustice of taking a public life by causing the death of innocent persons, then it is the same as the “mere” act which is illegal. If, in so doing, it is immoral to kill innocent persons, it is in fact not immoral to kill innocent persons at all. And that is not wrong. The moral equivalence between the individual and the state is as essential on which everyone claims to live in a democratic society as is in every single other.
Consider this a second time. It appears on an abstractly legal, legalistic level — for example, a criminal case with no chance of conviction. One might think about this situation — as many defendants are involved in that case — as a case of “legal negligence”, the act of poisoning a young man out of a lethal dose. This is not just a case of accidental poisoning to prevent a disease or other disease. It is precisely the act which causes the death of the victim.
It is a different matter how well the act is the actual evil. The actual harm is always a higher and greater moral evil. The latter is the crime. But the bad actor, in turn, often is morally responsible. That is why we call it “moral negligence”… it is the responsibility of the individual – the responsibility or even the responsibility itself.
Even if there is moral negligence, how much more it is the case of that moral liability
Legally,