Hotel coffeepot = li'l ole mini meth lab!
Link.According this the local news station in Huntsville Alabama, the ubiquitous cheap Mr. Coffee pot in hotel rooms is often used as a just-in-time makeshift mini-laboratory to make the drug meth.
[excerpt]: Ask just about anyone in law enforcement, and they'll tell you to be careful if you ever brew coffee in a hotel room. "I know enough now that whenever I go to a hotel, regardless of how nice it is, I'll never use a coffee pot," said Marshall County District Attorney Steve Marshall.
Reader comment: Aaron J. Hicks says,
It is interesting to note that apparently the Texas Controlled Substances Act can apparently be interpreted such that an automatic coffee maker is, in fact, illegal under state law. Specifically, section 481.002 notes that certain apparatus are considered "chemical laboratory apparatus," as follows:
(A) a condenser;J. Sherkow says:
(B) a distilling apparatus;
(C) a vacuum drier;
(D) a three-neck or distilling flask;
(E) a tableting machine;
(F) an encapsulating machine;
(G) a filter, Buchner, or separatory funnel;
(H) an Erlenmeyer, two-neck, or single-neck flask;
(I) a round-bottom, Florence, thermometer, or filtering flask;
(J) a Soxhlet
extractor;
(K) a
transformer;
(L) a flask
heater;
(M) a heating mantel;
or
(N) an adaptor tube.Link.
Of these, a coffepot contains G, K, L, and possibly I, depending upon ones opinion as to the nature of the carafe. I am not a lawyer, but it would seem that anti-drug laws have put everyone with a Mr. Coffee in Texas in trouble with the law if it is not registered under section 481.061. Interestingly, teachers are exempted under 481.0621, allowing them to get their cup of morning Joe without crossing the Texas DPS.
I have pointed this out a few times, and have yet to have anyone set me straight that I'm flat-out wrong.
As a law student, I would like to point of that Mr. Hicks is flat out wrong. His citing of the statute leaves out the beginning of the definition, limiting the apparatus by intent of manufacture. From Mr. Hicks own link to the statute, I cite as follows: "(1) designed, (2) made, or (3) adapted (4) to manufacture a controlled substance or (5) a controlled substance analogue" (numbered elements added for ease of explanation).David Vennik says:(1) A Mr. Coffee maker is not designed to make meth. It's designed, by Mr. Coffee, to make coffee. A Mr. Meth machine would be another story.
(2) A Mr. Coffee is not "made," that is, assembled to make meth. Again, its parts are assembled to make coffee.
(3) Rarely, I suppose are Mr. Coffee makers adapted by their end users. If they are, the end user only runs afoul of the law if it is done for the purpose (actually, it would probably be with the "reckless intent" but I'm not getting into this here) of making meth.
(4) Coffee is "manufactured" but coffee is not a controlled substance.
(5) Coffee is not an analogue of a controlled substance.
Now I hope it makes sense as well why teachers are left out--that is, so they can set up science lessons in their classrooms without registering what would otherwise be meth labs.
Hope this sets the law straight.
Just thought you might like to know that indeed the heating elements of filter coffee machines do in fact make very excellent and, my understanding is, increasingly popular heating devices, and extraction devices and, what the article says, reaction heaters(I personally think that it's not the best for reaction for the reason it's temperature fluctuation is pretty broad and containing the vapours is impractical in your average coffee maker). In that respect the idea of using a standard filter coffee machine flask is impractical.However I have seen flasks, specifically 'cona' band which are percolator machines with a base flask and a funnel (all made of pyrex of course) and a soda glass textured plug which functions as a filter - the way it works is the boiling water creates pressure which pumps the boiling water gently up through the coffee, and then when you turn off the heat it acts as a suction (yes, filtering flask) filter which then allows you to end up with nice percolated (yes, the best kind) coffee in the bottom. Amusingly this device is very useful for extracting alkaloids from many other kinds of dried plant material.
The comment from Aaron J. Hicks is incorrect in some respects however. There is no transformer coil in them, just a thermostat of some kind and a simple AC-powered heating element usually encased in aluminium (most likely either like ring coils in electric stove elements or ceramic encased nichrome coils) but they do indeed contain an interesting chemical apparatus in the form of a heat-powered drip-producing device which uses steam pressure in a heating cavity to push the fluid over into the filter, it's usually directly coupled to the hotplate's heating element, and indeed functions as a passively operated filter using steam to move water upwards (note it would work equally well with ethanol) and as for it being a texas law-illegal flask, it is not anything of the sort, it is, at best, flat bottom flask (spherical with a flat bottom). It vaguely resembles a soxlet but there is no condenser, it uses steam to make water percolate upwards to the drip point above the filter.
Out of the list Aaron gave, these things are correct: G in some cases H, almost a J, an L and close to being an M but heating mantles are generally used for round bottom flasks and have a hemispherical base to accomodate a round bottom flask, flat bottom (spherical with a truncated flat base) and earlenmeyers can be heated by flat hotplates.
so to be quotable:
G and L, and almost J, H and M
You could probably criminalise the possession of many household devices and chemicals if you wanted to take drug production laws to the extreme. It is illegal, for example, to simply extract an illicit substance from a plant source. In other words, a stove and cooking pot could be construed as an extraction device, as these work quite well for making opium tea.
I would guess from reading your drug-related posts in the past I am preaching to the choir but if you took drug laws to the Nth degree you'd have to be regularly inspected that you aren't using your kitchen, laundry and bathroom to make drugs, and it should be pointed out that the fallout from this is that hobby soapmakers, rocketry enthusiasts, hobby chemists, gun geeks and even dyers would be unable to practise their hobbies if all access to drug making devices and materials were outlawed.
Regulating commercial sales of drugs of whatever kind, and taxing them appropriately is one thing but impinging on the freedom of individuals to engage in related activities is not something that would sell very well, politically, and is a factor that the drug law liberalisation people could capitalise on, in my opinion.
the latest
latest episodes
Yet another excellent example of how the "war on Drugs" has permutated into the very thing that one would think should cause our leadership the greatest concern; loss of credibility. Fortunately, it doesn't cause 'em a lick of concern that smart people have come to see their elected leaders as dummies...they don't have a very high opinion of the people that elected 'em either.