• Question: Would you know how to make illegal drugs such as heroin or cocaine?

    Asked by anon-256638 to Sophie, Sandra, Kimberly, Katy, Karen, James_the_Scientist on 12 Jun 2020.
    • Photo: James Beswick

      James Beswick answered on 12 Jun 2020:

      If I *really* wanted to I would have the skills to make illegal drugs. However obviously that would be hugely illegal and there are actually things in place to stop chemists ‘breaking bad’ like this. Certain chemicals that I want to use for perfectly legal medical research are heavily restricted because they can be used to make illegal drugs, and have to be kept under lock and key in our laboratory!

Comments

  • Photo: Alex

    Alex commented on :

    Hi Sasha, just like James said although we might technically have the skills to – we’re not allowed!

    Although, in my lab we sometimes work with cocaine as it interacts with some of the proteins we work on and it has to be kept in a locked poisons cabinet and it’s recorded who takes out some and for what experiment – but it does mean scientists can completely legally can buy really big amounts of drugs online, which is crazy to explain to a lot of people not in science!