Chemists Skirting the Law to Sell Mind-Altering Drugs

The WSJ has an article about a chemist, David Llewellyn, who is developing new, legal, drugs that are similar to cocaine, ecstasy and others. The drugs are currently legal because he sells them as "not for human consumption." In the meantime, people are dying from these drugs and who knows what types of side effects they have on those who are not dying. He does have some quality control though. Here is what the article says:

Mr. Llewellyn ... boasts that his safety testing method is foolproof: He and several colleagues sit in a room and take a new product "almost to overdose levels" to see what happens. "We'll all sit with a pen and a pad, some good music on, and one person who's straight who's watching everything," he says

One more quote you might find interesting:

Mr. Llewellyn, a self-described former crack addict, started out making mephedrone, a stimulant also known as Meow Meow that was already popular with the European clubbing set. Once governments began banning it earlier this year, Mr. Llewellyn and a chemistry-savvy partner started selling something they dubbed Nopaine—a stimulant they concocted by tweaking the molecular structure of the attention-deficit drug Ritalin. 

Nopaine "is every bit as good as cocaine," says Mr. Llewellyn, who has lived in Antwerp on and off since the late 1980s. "You can freebase it. You can snort it like crack." Still, he emphasized, "Everything we sell is legal. I don't want to go to jail for 14 years." 

The article explains that Llewellyn sells his drugs on line and has dealers buying in bulk who then sell to individuals. He claims that as soon as one drug is banned, he has others waiting to put into production. All with the purpose of altering people's minds under the fraudulent claim of "not for human consumption."

Apparently, Llewellyn is only one of several "entrepreneur chemists" who are skirting the law to sell their new formulas for crack, ecstasy, etc. Llewellyn is successful enough that he has two labs and eight employees. Numerous deaths too...

"Not for human consumption"--give me a break! Unfortunately, as long as there are people like this guy who are determined to get around the law, they will say what they need to say to avoid being prosecuted--even if it's a blatant fraud.

It would be nice to lock guys like this up and throw away the key...