In fact, homemade meth is in sharp decline, thanks to stepped-up law enforcement and legislation cutting off access to legal precursor ingredients.
"The reason the purity dropped so low a few years ago was because law enforcement agencies managed to disrupt the supply chain of the precursor ingredients used to make ecstasy," she said.
And due to the complex ways in which various precursor ingredients combine to form ozone, concentrations of that pollutant may actually be higher in the countryside than in the city.
The most detailed and highly classified cables in the WikiLeaks trove underscore that, while Syria has the ability to make chemical weapons, it relies heavily on other nations for getting precursor ingredients that can also be used for medicine.
The attacks last week could have been worse: Inside the attackers' apartment were more of the precursor ingredients used to make the explosive — nearly 40 gallons of acetone and eight gallons of hydrogen peroxide — as well as a suitcase containing over 30 pounds of ready-to-go TATP, according to the Belgian police.
Syria was believed to possess 1,300 tonnes of chemical agents, including sulphur mustard (which forms mustard gas), nerve agents sarin and VX and their precursor ingredients.
Thanks to tightened restrictions on precursor ingredients like ephedrine, meth production has dropped significantly in Oklahoma and across the country.
The take of 1.2 tonnes meth and its precursor ingredients would have produced more than 800kg of final-product drug, with a street value of $1.2 billion.
Due to increased restrictions on precursor ingredients, purity in 2009 was at an all-time low, with most MDMA seized in Europe containing no MDMA at all.
As recently as 2009, because law enforcement agencies managed to disrupt the supply chain of the precursor ingredients used to make ecstasy, most pills in the UK contained zero MDMA.
The increase in heroin and meth seizures coincided with a US rise in opioid addiction linked to prescription pill abuse, and cartels came to dominate the meth business during that time after tighter restrictions on precursor ingredients shut down most labs in America.
