Federal agents say 88-year-old Saratoga man's invention is being used by meth labs

[MODem75]

Eighty-eight-year-old retired metallurgist Bob Wallace is a self-described tinkerer, but he hardly thinks of himself as the Thomas Edison of the illegal drug world.

He has nothing to hide. His product is packaged by hand in a cluttered Saratoga garage. It's stored in a garden shed in the backyard. The whole operation is guarded by an aged, congenial dog named Buddy.

But federal and state drug enforcement agents are coming down hard on Wallace's humble homemade solution, which he concocted to help backpackers purify water.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency and state regulators say druggies can use the single ingredient in his "Polar Pure" water purifier -- iodine -- to make crystal meth.

Wallace says federal and state agents have effectively put him out of business, because authorities won't clear the way for him to buy or sell the iodine he needs for his purification bottles. He has been rejected for a state permit by the Department of Justice and is scheduled to appeal his case before an administrative judge in Sacramento next month.

Meanwhile, the exasperated Stanford University-educated engineer and his 85-year-old girlfriend said the government -- in its zeal to clamp down on meth labs -- has instead stopped hikers, flood victims and others from protecting themselves against a bad case of the runs.

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http://www.mercurynews.com/saratoga/ci_19385037

[Liberal_in_LA]

1. ..and his 85-year old girlfriend.

nice! :-)

[razorman]

7. Are they going steady?

[Liberal_in_LA]

8. not til they are older

[AverageJoe90]

2. Good luck, Mr. Wallace. You'll need it.

And FUCK the D.E.A. :mad:

[sarcasmo]

3. What a great invention. Watch the failed war on drugs ruin Polar Pure.

[Luminous Animal]

4. Is iodine a controlled substance now?

[formercia]

6. One can purchase up to 250 grams legally

plenty for sale on fleabay

Also videos on Youtube on how to make it from other chemicals.

[iscooterliberally]

5. You can still buy Sudafed though.

I guess Bob Wallace needs to own his own drug company to compete. So much for the 'free market'. What a bunch of BULLSHIT our Federal Government has become. We need to vote out all prohibitionists.

:mad: :argh: :grr: :nuke:

[Downwinder]

9. Cars are used to pick up and deliver drugs. Confiscate them all.

[Aleric]

12. Water is used in meth labs

Better not let anyone have any.

[dixiegrrrrl]

10. I for one am glad DEA is doing this.

The stupider and more tone deaf, outrageous behavior by that agency, the better.
Hopefully they will get so blatantly moranish that they will implode in a puff of sheer inanity.

[eppur_se_muova]

14. I bristled at your title ... then I read the rest of your post.

"I know no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their stringent execution." -- U.S. Grant

[dixiegrrrrl]

15. Nice quote. My point exactly.

[Romulox]

11. The Drug War: Victory is "just around the corner!"

:shrug:

[eppur_se_muova]

13. Attention ignorant Feds: Iodine works in **catalytic** amounts here -- any source of iodine will do,

... including salts such as sodium iodide (if you add hydrochloric acid). The reaction in question uses **phosphorous** and iodine. The phosphorous is completely consumed, so must be used in large amounts; the iodine forms HI, the *real* reducing agent, which is converted back to I2 in the reaction and thus recycled. If they're going to limit the sale of anything, it makes infinitely more sense to go after phosphorous, which is an exceedingly flammable hazardous material. There are a lot fewer legitimate reasons to be purchasing phosphorous (which is used mostly in pyrophorics) than there are for iodine (which has numerous uses in medicine and biology). This is just common sense, twice over.

Another favorite method of making meth involves LITHIUM -- stripped from lithium batteries. I don't see those being controlled by the DEA anytime soon.

(All this info is freely available through Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methamphetamine#Synthesis (although some of the details are wrong -- aluminum amalgam is a reactant, not a catalyst; platinum only works as a catalyst when there is a source of hydrogen; etc.).

"Cops are the most humorless knotheads on the planet." and drug cops are the most humorless of cops.