Phenyl-2-propanone (P2P) meth has been quietly on the rise since the late 2000s, when national attention was on the opioid epidemic. Now Crystal P2P Meth is readily available and at a much cheaper price than the older types of meth.

P2P meth may create a much sharper decline in mental health, to the point of psychosis, and has caused a rise in overdose deaths.

Some people now believe that P2P meth is, at least in part, responsible for the sharp rise in homelessness, such as in California.

Why P2P Meth Is Manufactured

In short, Crystal P2P Meth is manufactured because the United States and Mexico did an effective job of cutting off the supply of a key ingredient of the old version of meth.

This curtailed drug trafficking of the old version of meth (called ephedrine meth).

When Mexican manufacturers were no longer able to easily get hold of the key ingredient ephedrine, they turned to another recipe for the drug.

Restrictions On Cold Medicines And Ephedrine Used To Make Meth

Crystal meth drug use began to rise in popularity in the late eighties and early nineties, causing increasing difficulty for local and national law enforcement agencies.

By the turn of the century, state and federal entities had to take steps to hamper the meth-making process.

Those steps included the restriction of pseudoephedrine, which is a decongestant that uses ephedrine.

Previously, ephedrine meth-makers had only to get large quantities of over-the-counter decongestants to make the drug.

But when the drug cartels were no longer able to easily get ephedrine in either the U.S. or Mexico, meth production declined.

Cheaper To Produce Than Meth

Enter the P2P method of making meth.

The P2P recipe in America precedes the ephedrine recipe and was used by biker gangs in the 1970s like the Hells Angels.

But when the recipe was refined in the 2000s, chemists of the criminal world discovered they were able to use a variety of readily available and interchangeable products.

This enabled smaller operations with super labs to produce P2P cheaply and at a much larger scale than the major drug cartels had previously been able to do.

Chemicals Used In P2P Meth

There were two problems with the P2P recipe. It was volatile to make and had too much l-methamphetamine.

In meth, d-methamphetamine is responsible for the high, while l-methamphetamine creates the side effects, like a high heart rate.

But in the new meth, makers discovered how to remove l-meth and keep mostly d-meth by using toxic chemicals (found in readily available products).

Ingredients used to produce P2P meth include: