Cocaine is not really "synthesized" per se, it's basically extracted from the leaves of the coca plant. It's not too complicated of a process, it's just quite labor intensive and you'll need many (many) kilos of leaves to do the extraction. Aside from the leaves though, the necessary chemicals are pretty basic as is the procedure, can be done (and frequently is) in the remote areas of the jungle where gangs like FARC and Shining Path down in Colombia, Bolivia and Peru have a ton of makeshift labs. More often than not they'll usually do the rudimentary initial extraction out there in the jungle, and get a crude cocaine base which is later further refined into the final cocaine hydrochloride powder most people know as "coke", which can be done anywhere from professional type labs to some random guys' apartment in Lima.

In case I didn't give it away already by my likely unnecessarily detailed opening paragraph, you can say that I...am familiar with such subjects, and am a chemistry dork. That said, the article in question raises some interesting points, but I strongly doubt that we will see an emergence of the actual drug referenced (fenethylline aka captagon) in any real way, at least not in the US. I think it'll remain as it currently is; a weird regionally popular drug mostly used by people in Gulf/Arab nations. It's pretty popular in places like Saudi Arabia, Syria and some other places in that region. It's more or less the same thing as classic "speed", it's a prodrug for amphetamine, so the effects are similar to adderall as well as meth, just not as strong.

Given the abundance of dirt cheap and potent methamphetamine all across the US (and increasingly in Europe as well), anyone trying to bring this stuff to the market would face an uphill battle trying to get drug users to even want to use it versus the alternatives, to begin with. Then there's the fact that said pushers attempting to bring this to market would be stepping on the toes of the very powerful, very scary, very violent Mexican cartels who specialize in the manufacture, trafficking and sale of that aforementioned methamphetamine.

I do think that we'll continue to see the same kind of macro trends we are seeing in the drug market overall, similar to trends we see in the traditional economy: drugs which have a high cost or are labor intensive to produce which can be replaced by cheaper synthetic alternatives, will be, for most users. This has happened already on an unprecedented scale with heroin in the US and Canada over the last 5+ years...traditional heroin has all but disappeared from the black market, replaced by fentanyl and other, often quite potent and dangerous research chemical opioids; both fentanyl analogues and some more 'interesting' compounds like the *nitazenes (isotonitazene, metonitazene, protonitazene, etc.) which are an entire thread's worth of interesting discussion on their own. Fun fact: the original nitazene drug that gained prominence in underground drug discussion groups and chemistry forums was a drug known as etonitazene; a legendary substance which was for many considered to be a holy grail type ridiculously potent drug, a benzimidazole opioid with an unprecedented level of addiction potential (it's about 1000 to 1500 times as potent as morphine) and is notorious for it's euphoria and the fiendish habit that develops in those who dare to use it. The withdrawals from these drugs are so bad that users often commit suicide because they are unable to take the agony, talk about yikes.

So yeah, as you can imagine -- not a good thing that these kinds of substances, once relegated to the dustbin of pharmaceutical research history, have resurfaced as novel drugs of abuse which are being synthesized in shady Chinese labs and tweaked by people who may or may not have any idea what they are doing, to get around laws like the US analogue act and stay in a legal grey area.

We'll continue to see dangerous synthetic opioids proliferate and killing hundreds of thousands of people, needlessly...the war on drugs has been an unmitigated failure, in my opinion they need to fully legalize and regulate ALL drugs (not decriminalize, which is a half-assed non solution). Focus instead on providing people who want treatment for addiction or drug abuse, we aren't going to arrest our way out of this crisis...the wealthy are able to continue doing whatever drugs they want with impunity and if they are caught it's a slap on the wrist for them. Most high-schoolers have access to a wider variety of different illicit substances than your average "drug dealer" 25 years ago would've been able to acquire, clearly what we've been doing is not working.

Apologies for the rant....kind of wanted to write about this anyway so I figured I would take the time to let my fingers do the walking on these keys and will wind up mirroring this content in other ways on my blog or something, toodles.