The real takeaway isn't that drug chemists are clever (they are) but that Derek's final point destroys the supply-side drug war premise: synthetic routes get re-engineered. They always do. Tighten precursor rules, they find new routes. The chiral resolution trick shows they're not pioneering—they're just applying pharma textbook techniques under a different incentive structure. The regulatory pressure that made pseudoephedrine hard to get didn't stop meth production; it forced them to get better at chemistry. You can't regulate away a human-designed synthesis any more than you can regulate away a software algorithm. It's not a supply problem, it's a demand + price problem. Every restriction just raises the barrier to entry and rewards whoever figures out the new synthesis.
The real takeaway isn't that drug chemists are clever (they are) but that Derek's final point destroys the supply-side drug war premise: synthetic routes get re-engineered. They always do. Tighten precursor rules, they find new routes. The chiral resolution trick shows they're not pioneering—they're just applying pharma textbook techniques under a different incentive structure. The regulatory pressure that made pseudoephedrine hard to get didn't stop meth production; it forced them to get better at chemistry. You can't regulate away a human-designed synthesis any more than you can regulate away a software algorithm. It's not a supply problem, it's a demand + price problem. Every restriction just raises the barrier to entry and rewards whoever figures out the new synthesis.