Opinions - Ways to prevent lookalikes?

[Greenport]

Okay swiM's captain (Crunch) knows that one of the biggest problems regarding ecstasy is due to the assholes who will put anything but mdma in pills and pass them off as ecstasy pills. This poses serious health risks to those consuming their random concoctions.

Crunch wanted to make this thread to perhaps brainstorm some methods that the true pressers could use to prevent their end-product from being drenched with lookalikes once on the street.

One idea Crunch has is to have some of the powder on the inside dyed a different color, that way on the outside it may be red but on the inside it would be blue or green etc, that way if one of the pills are crushed a rollerskater can assess the purity by the fact that there are two colors.

Are there any other ideas some bees have that would help to prevent this serious problem?

[julian]

A while back swim was seeing a trend of good pills with glitter actually in the pill. Unfortunately it did not take long for copycats to flood the market and ruin the reputation of "glitter pills."

Swim has noticed some pills recently with a "pokeball" stamp on the back of the pill in addition to the logo on the front. These pills are always the same size and shape with the same pokeball logo on the back, the only thing that differs is the stamp on the front and the color of the pill. Of course this could be copied by anyone, but swim is yet to see a copycat press of a pokeball.


Swim liked your idea of a bi-colored pill with a different colored core. Unfortunately this too could be copied. There probably is no fool proof method to prevent people from copying a good press. If one person can make a good pill with a specific design, another person can probably make a bad pill with the same design.

Swim was thinking that a large enough organization with a lot of power and connections could monitor the market and "eliminate" anybody who is trying to copy their pills.

[Greenport]

Crunch thinks it could be possible to have a service, similar to that one pill reports site, except that it could have some sort of map to mark where the bad ones are most-located. Unfortunately it would have to only map bad ones because if it mapped the location of 'good' pills, law enforcement could use it as a tool to better locate the manufacturers. Hell, let them use it as a tool to catch all the copycat people but don't give them the locations of the good ones

And yeah that's the major issue that takes place is that almost anything that a good presser can do, a bad presser can catch up to. However most bad pressers aren't going to take nearly as much time and money to make theirs look good.

Another idea is to add a small amount of some aromatic flavorant to it. One that can't be easily mimicked because perhaps it would be a complex aroma but would still be nontoxic.

[Readux]

How about a very intricate press? Like super small script seen on dollar bills. Of course the press would very expensive but could possibly prevent copies for a while.

[chukbzle]

still just because the press might suck doesnt mean the pill will remember wafers? they were just like mdma chunks or ppl that put pure in capsules doesnt mean its fake ,best way nowadays is get a testing kit for em like dancesafe does

[Readux]

SWIM agrees, best way is to either test before buying or at least check the reports before buying then test.

[Greenport]

Well yeah, but testing kits can be expensive and formaldehyde/sulfuric acid can be kinda hard for the average joe to obtain. Also it unfortunately wastes some of the powder, which costs quite a bit all things considered.

[geezaman]

This is only a thought but no one yet seems to have considered the chemist who makes the MDMA/pill will probably never meet the user and so has no reputation to uphold, on this basis they could press a load of good pills with a design so word spreads that Rolexes (for a classic example) are really good and then a month later use exactly the same press to produce bunk.
Why cant the pills we refer to as the "copy cats" be coming from the same press just to maximise profit.
As the chemist has no face, name, or reputation to uphold SWIM would consider this as highly more likely, and so any intricacy added to the design or or specific colouration would be irrelevant?

If however copy cat pressing is really other people copying the press designs SWIM wonders if pills stamped on both sides with different, and original, intricate designs, with one side also having a small date printed on it, signifying that the producer of this pill will be releasing pills with the new stamp on from this date. Then if SWIY comes across said new design it will also have a different intricate design on the back and a new date. The date would obviously only be a month and year ie 09/11, and ideally the dates would mean the logo was changed every 3 moths or more.

This could still be copied but would perhaps be more difficult, and take more effort. Providing pills in unique packaging rather than unique press designs would probably be easier.

Peace,
Geezaman

Reputation Comments on this post:

You thought of something that everyone else overlooked, and provided an interesting solution to the question

[Readux]

Yeah that was SWIMs idea too, however he is guessing that most "copy cats" are actually the same people making bunks, like the transformers, good first batch then pipes for the rest. If only makers actually cared about their reputation instead of money.

[Greenport]

That's sad, considering mdma is a relatively cheap drug. Its precursors are everywhere!

It is too bad that this world revolves so much around money...it's pathetic. Money means shit, once you die you don't take it with you. People just need to enjoy the times while they're here as best they can and stop chasing dollar bills like they mean everything.

The chemists/pressers should care more about the ultimate users having a fun time and getting a quality product, which can be reasonably priced rather than try and squeeze every bit of money out that they can by ripping them off. Those kinds of people are going to hell if there is one.

[Readux]

Wait, where does SWIY live?! In the states the precursors are heavily watched, safrole is impossible to get in useful amounts and same for piperonal. SWIM is pretty sure that the synthesis of MDMA is easy, however getting the precursors are near impossible. Correct SWIM if he's wrong

[Greenport]

Look a little deeper than that. Try vanillin or eugenol, sir

One can get vanillin very easily from their local grocery store. Eugenol is a little harder but still available. Both can be formed using currently-existing technology into piperonal or safrole, which of course are the 'desired' precursors. Thus they could certainly suffice as precursors to mdma.

The great thing about vanillin in particular is that even though it is a potential precursor to just about every amphetamine one can think up, it will never be made illegal because people would absolutely freak out if they couldn't have vanilla Sure, it requires another two steps but hey any yield is good yield.

[Readux]

Hmmm SWIM will definitely look into this, he previously thought that the vanillin method had a horrible yield, if this is true and vanillin is easy to use, then the pill makers are just being greedy

[Greenport]

Well that is the kind of procedure in which yields would vary greatly dependent on the competency of the chemist and the overall procedure used. One can easily try different things and take more cautious steps to increase the yield. Also both vanillin and eugenol are sufficiently cheap enough that there is a lot of room for error.

Google shopping lists a 17g bottle of vanillin (not just vanilla extract) at just under 6 bucks, which even if one had a total yield of 10% mdma in the end still means they'd get 1700mg, which is enough for ~15 pills. That means if the said alchemist was a nice guy and didn't care to make any actual money off it, she could sell them at 40 cents each and not lose any money (well not including reagents). Given that the yield can certainly be made higher than that, and that mdma is realistically much more expensive, even the crappiest yields would be a good source of income.

And once an alchemist finds that magical combination they have as much safrole or piperonal as they can get their procedure to yield

Therefore anybody who is pressing anything other than md(m)a in a pill is absolutely evil. It's something that needs to be stopped one way or another.

[peanuth8222]

legalize it! no more bad pills