Why are pharmaceutical opioid powders so rare?

I don't understand why no one synthesizes Oxycodone (or Oxymorhpone, Hydrocodone, Hydromorphone, etc) HCl. Pharma pills are very expensive, so this should be quite profitable. It would also be great to have some Oxycodone HCL instead of pills. Could be dosed far more accurately (not just 5, 10, 20... mg) aswell. Can anyone explain this to me?


Comments


[3 Points] Chardlz:

I'm not 100% on this, but from what I've seen when people ask similar questions it's that it's just far more difficult than it's worth to synthesize those drugs. Assuming you're starting from an opium poppy plant you have a couple of alkaloids in it. The most important and commonly used one is morphine which is how people make heroin and whatnot. That's easier, extract it, add a chemical I can't remember the name of, bake it up, and bam you got some H. However, going from poppies to the pharma pills is a fundamentally different process. Firstly, you have to start somewhere other than morphine. In modern pharmaceutical production they use thebaine as a precursor which is relatively difficult to obtain. It's found in poppy straw, 99% of which is grown in Australia, Spain, and France. Even if somebody were to grow the necessary poppy, the process for making that into Oxy or Hydro is a very difficult process and the precursor is already illegal in the US through the Analog Act. The production cost:profit ratio doesn't work out very well in that sense without a lot of startup costs by way of capital, that is, the machines and tools needed for this synthesis. An easier way in terms of accessibility, ease of production, and costs of production would be to make it from Codeine tabs but even that is very intensive. Ultimately, the biggest reason nobody does is that the market isn't big enough for anybody to warrant getting into it. Even if it were a bigger market, it's expected that the pills would have to be cheaper, somebody would pretty quickly figure out the pills aren't real, they aren't pharma official. The demand for pressed pills or counterfeit pills demands a lower price point.

From a business perspective if the vendor isn't up front about them being pressed like the bar vendors are they'll lose all credibility once somebody figures it out. If they are up front though they'll have to offer a reason for them to be purchased over the real deal. The easiest way to do that is lower prices which means lower margins which makes it less profitable and less desirable as something to do.


[2 Points] Theeconomist1:

Exactly like others have said. If you can get the main ingredient, you'll probably just find it more economical to make H due to difficulty in making Oxy or hydro. Thus, this means you have to divert the powder from a legit supplier which is harder. Compounding pharmacies get these powders legally but those Pharmas are fewer and farther between. So you'll need to divert at the supply chain which is harder. Also what makes Pharmaceuitxals so expensive is the guarantee of the purity. Now we know there are counterfeits but at the end, Pharmas still offer a guarantee of quality you can't get with a powder as easily. It'd be easy to cut hydro or Oxy powder. Thus I wouldn't expect that hydro or Oxy powder would command the same price per mg. I wouldn't pay a buck per mg of powder. I buy Pharmas Bc of the near guarantee in quality.

Therefore it can be deduced that the powders won't have the margins that pills have and therefore mean the profit incentive is dimished to some speculative degree.

Further why do people buy pills instead of H? There are some that simply prefer it. But I think most feel safer with a pharmaceutical than some raw powder they might not know the purity of.

I think bottom line the economic incentive is not there. Like I said, powders will not command the same price as pills. Guaranteed quality is much of the premium you pay for pills over something like H. He combined difficulty in obtaining and the ability to create another drug more easily will continue to make semi-synthetic opioid powders a unicorn. I don't believe anything is impossible. I believe economics makes things undoable or not worth doing. The powders simply aren't as prevalent. The powders would have to be priced cheaper than the pharmaceutical. Like alp. Pharmaceutical Xanax is prob more expensive than pressed Xanax and pressed Xanax is more expensive than powder Xanax. I don't think there is enough incentive for a supplier to supply it given the risk and relative scarcity.


[1 Points] Hon3yB33z:

Oxycodone (or Oxymorhpone, Hydrocodone, Hydromorphone

All of these are simi-synthetic. The pharmaceutical companies have legal poppy farms and buy opium paste legally from (legal and probably sometimes illegal) poppy farmers. They extract morphine and codeine and then use them as chemical precursors to the above mentioned narcotic pharmaceutical ingredients.

It is possible to make those by total synthesis, but it is more cost effective to get plants (poppies) to make the precursors (morphine and codeine) for you.

It is relatively easy to make heroin from morphine and it is already a perfected process that the heroin labs are familiar with. Their customers demand heroin - not oxycodone, oxymorphone, hydromorphone or hydrocodone.

TL;DR -- It's a cost of production issue.


[1 Points] Trappy_Pandora:

Just purify your heroin


[1 Points] aboutthednm:

Because most pharmaceutical opiates (not including the fentanyls) are made from a natural precursor found in opium poppies.

It's a strictly controlled and finite resource. Total synthesis of morphine and derivatives is possible, but yields are low and it involves a great number of steps.

At this point, we are exhausting the world's supply for precursors, so we look for new opiates and opioids that can be made from scratch, such as fentanyl, with ease.

America consumes something like 80% of the world's yield from Poppy crops. In reality we have many many fully synthetic opioids that can be used, but the *condones and *morphones all start out with latex from a Poppy.

So you're much more likely to find powdered opioids than you're going to find powdered opiate.


[1 Points] Devoid_:

Semi synthetic opiates are a bitch because you need poppies as a precursor or be a chemistry genius. Full synthetics are a lot easier to make and there are people synthesizing fentanyl, but mostly rc labs in India and China although no one in china's making it now because of the ban. Half the pressed opiates on the markets are fentanyl presses anyway


[1 Points] galmse:

"No one" synthesizes most of the other API powders you see on the DNMs either. They are diverted from or sold on the side by corrupt employees of their manufacturers before they ever make it to the pharmaceutical company who ends up pressing the pills. Difference is, the less strictly controlled ones (benzos, modafinil, etc.) are made mostly in India and China where that kind of thing is easier to get away with.


[-1 Points] None:

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