Help halt the misuse of precursors
Illicit drug seizures reveal that some criminals are using pharmaceutical chemicals to produce illegal narcotics.
Medicine is meant to treat disease, kill viruses and save lives, but the chemicals used to make pharmaceuticals can sometimes do more harm than good - when they are used to make illicit narcotics and psychotropic drugs. Illicit drugmakers have long targeted the global pharmaceutical industry to source some ingredients for the manufacture of illegal street drugs such as cocaine, heroin, ecstasy and methamphetamines.
This diversion of chemicals into illicit drug manufacturing has been practised for decades and has sparked various anti-diversion laws, inspired by the 1988 United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic of Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances. The issue especially affects pharmaceutical manufacturers, according to a new report on European Union (EU) drug precursor seizures in 2007, published by the European Commission's directorate-general for enterprise. It noted that while chemicals such as acetic anhydride, anthranilic acid, phenyl-acetone, and ephedrines help to make a range of medicinal products, these substances can also be used to make narcotics and psychotropic drugs, which is why they are now controlled with anti-diversion laws in many developed countries.
"Most of the drugs in the illicit traffic, with the exception of marijuana, require chemicals to be produced," notes a US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) briefing note. As a result, governments have attempted to crack down on diversion, creating a new legal category of controlled substances they generally refer to as "drug precursors": legitimate chemical substances that are used to manufacture illicit drugs.
For example, ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, commonly used in pharmaceuticals as stimulants and decongestants, are also coveted by illegal drug manufacturers to make methamphetamine, a highly addictive, euphoria-inducing drug. In 2007, (the latest statistics available) more than eight tonnes of illegally obtained ephedrine and pseudoephedrine were seized at EU borders, enough to make five tonnes of "crystal meth" worth u1.4 bn, according to the Commission report.
In the same year, more than 32,000 litres of acetic anhydride, commonly used in the production of aspirin, were also seized by EU customs officials, enough to make 16 tonnes of heroin hydrochloride. These numbers reflect only the level of illegal chemicals stopped - there are no data outlining how much legitimate material is successfully diverted into clandestine operations.
sourcing loophole
Despite these difficulties, Neil Harvey, head of international trade at the Chemical Industries Association (CIA) in London, said it would not make sense to ban these coveted chemicals. "If there's a clampdown on one fashionable substance, [drug makers] will just move on to the next best thing," Harvey said. "You put your block in the dam at one point and the leak springs somewhere else."
Of the 23 ingredients listed in the EU's regulation EC 273/2004 on drug precursors, at least 13 can be used to make pharmaceuticals or pharmaceutical ingredients.
Vasileios Tsifoutis, manager of health safety and the environment at the European Association of Chemical Distributors (FECC), said: "It is in general unclear how drugmakers actually get their hands on these chemicals, but the channels that they can use are not always connected to direct "business" with chemical suppliers." This is because the regulations requiring chemical suppliers to check the validity of their customers and report any suspicious transactions "have secured the supply chain to a great extent," he added.
But Harvey thinks he knows at least part of the problem. "We believe the biggest loophole in the policing of legislation has to do with internet trade," he said. "People can buy materials online and it's very hard to intercept one kilo packages. But that's at the small end of the drugmaking market; we don't know where drugmakers get materials for huge clandestine laboratories." Harvey believes some countries, particularly in Asia and South America, do not enforce controls as stringently as the EU. "In theory, all places that sell precursors must have controls in place, but in some countries they aren't as stringent about them," he explained.
Materials are shipped by mail, and drugmakers can simply misdeclare what they have purchased and its intended purpose. "It could be misquoted and put down as hair dye materials or something vague," Harvey explained. "There's misdeclaration going on, and it is very hard for customs authorities to intercept every single package that crosses the border."
Usually, before any transaction is made, European chemical suppliers are required by regulation EC 273/2004 to obtain a declaration from their customer outlining exactly what the company is going to make with the precursor chemicals. Suppliers are obliged by law to report customers with suspicious papers or behaviours (for example, if they want to pay in cash, or they are an unknown brand with little information available) to the authorities.
know your customers
"Ultimately it comes down to Do you know who you're selling your chemicals to?. If the answer is yes, you can go ahead. If no, you must do all sorts of background checks to make sure they are legitimate," stressed Harvey. Technically, those same rules should apply to internet sales, even if the regulations do not say so precisely, according to Mike Walls, md of government and regulatory affairs at the American Chemistry Council (ACC). He said US chemical diversion and trafficking regulations (which are broadly harmonised with EU legislation) do apply to internet transactions, including cross-border transactions of scheduled chemicals.
"The US DEA has several internet initiatives underway, particularly regarding online "pharmacies", and it's my impression that the agency is pretty diligent about tracking those types of sales," Walls said. "I am certain that for ACC member companies they impose rigorous controls on the drug precursor chemicals regardless of the form of the transaction, whether over the internet or otherwise."
But as always with the internet, controls are harder to police, particularly in countries where controls are not well enforced to begin with. Chemicals and pharmaceuticals for illicit drugs are still shipped into the US or Europe through the mail from less stringent countries. "If [customs] were able to intercept even 0.1% [of illegal packages] that would be huge," Harvey said. But despite the internet loophole, regulation EC 273/2004 in the EU appears to be a successful endeavour. In the case of meth-making ephedrine, the number of suspicious shipment seizures in the EU jumped from 14 in 2006 to 34 in 2007, and the number of pseudoephedrine seizures jumped from five in 2006 to 20 in 2007, according to the EU's summary reports.
Although these statistics make it clear that diversion of pseudoephedrine is a problem in Europe, the Proprietary Association of Great Britain, which represents manufacturers of over-the-counter pharmaceuticals, claimed illicit drug manufacturing with drugs like pseudoephedrine is virtually non-existent, at least in the UK.
"We have been concerned in the past that pseudoephedrine could become a problem, but it's just a few idiots who think they can do the chemistry, and it's never gone much farther than that," said Sheila Kelly, executive director of the Association. "We considered making it a prescription-only drug [in the UK], but we haven't because it hasn't become a problem."
She added that most illicit drugs arrive in the UK complete, rather than as separate ingredients to be assembled in a clandestine lab later; finished products like cocaine arrive in the UK from other European countries such as Spain, or from Latin America, for instance. That said, she does not think the lack of illicit drug manufacturing in the UK has much to do with particular caution on the part of pharmaceutical companies.
clandestine labs
"I don't think it's simply because our members are vigilant about controlling their product. I'm sure they are vigilant, but if you don't have many junkies in the first place, you don't have a problem with manufacturing," Kelly said, who noted the UK's drug of choice is cocaine, not pseudoephedrine-based meth. "Whatever is coming in, it's usually coming in as finished product." But this doesn't mean chemicals made by UK manufacturers, or drugs made in clandestine labs, aren't heading out of the country for drug users elsewhere.
However, this is no excuse for slackness. "Misuse of chemicals can happen everywhere in Europe at any time with any listed chemicals, so companies need sound in-house procedures covering all departments," said Rene van Sloten, executive director for industrial policy at the European Chemical Industry Council (Cefic).
He said chemical manufacturers and distributors often go above and beyond the minimum precursor reporting requirements, because it protects them on a number of levels. "European chemical companies are doing all they can to prevent chemicals produced for licit commercial use being misused for illicit purposes. Companies take all these measures in order to comply with legal requirements, to respect the principles of responsible care and to avoid negative publicity," van Sloten added.
In the US, ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, which are coveted by labs making crystal meth, seem to be considered a major problem: in the DEA's chemical mail transactions regulation, only companies shipping ephedrine, pseudoephedrine and phenylpropanolamine and products that contain them are told to report mail orders of all sizes on a monthly basis.
The focus on meth appears to working too; the DEA reported on its website a 50% decline in meth use in teenagers between 2001 and 2008, and a 50% decline in meth use among American workers since 2005. The number of clandestine meth lab busts have declined from more than 17,000 nationwide in 2003 to fewer than 7,000 in 2008.
But regardless of the effect of good legislation, Harvey said some chemical precursors will always end up in the wrong hands. "I firmly believe that it doesn't matter what the law says, people are going to do what they've put their minds to doing. We can't change the behaviour of drug dealers; that's not what we're here for," he said. "But we can certainly change the behaviours of our chemical suppliers and uphold our end of the bargain."