Interdiction efforts even the Psychotrophe supports:
In a month-long investigation a team from Fauna and Flora International (FFI) uncovered the illegal distilleries deep in the forest of the Cardamom mountains in south-west Cambodia.
The two new facilities were intended to make sassafras oil from the roots of the extremely rare Mreah Prew Phnom tree for export to neighbouring countries.
Sassafras oil is used to make cosmetics, but it can also be used as a precursor chemical to make methylenedioxymethamphetamine, more commonly known as the recreational drug ecstasy.
FFI was alarmed that the rate of the illegal production of the "ecstasy oil" could have wiped out the Mreah Prew Phnom tree within five years. The trees are felled and the excavated roots mechanically shredded and boiled in a cauldron during a process that takes about 12 hours to produce 30 litres of oil.
Idiotic street value figures aside, a good piece; I wonder how substitutable this precursor (safrole?) is, in terms of organic sources at least. Is this damage a function of prohibition? One is inclined to assume so; at the very least, it makes it impossible to source the compound from sustainable forestry/agriculture.
Deeply screwed up on a shamanic level, too - the mother of those trees must be PISSED...
You could make LSD from something as simple as indole, but it would require many steps after that to reach the final structure.
With enough research you could probably design a synthesis of MDMA or LSD using more modern synthetic methods, that could make the recipes in PhiKaL or TiHKaL seem ancient by comparison (although many of the reactions would be unchanged). You could probably even design an enantiopure synthesis with enough time and effort.
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