Sigma Aldrich Certificate Of Analysis: Fill & Download for Free

Many well-known chemical supply companies sell controlled substances. They are usually massively expensive compared to street prices. Here is a link to Sigma-Aldrich's catalog entry for MDMA, roughly $800 for a human dose:http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/catalog/product/sigma/m6403?lang=en&region=USGiven the expense of commercial controlled substances, the National Institute on Drug Abuse runs a program to provide researchers with chemicals that are unavailable, difficult to obtain, or overly expensive to buy.Either way, these sources limit availability to individuals and institutions with appropriate permissions from the government (the DEA in the US). In granting a permit, the DEA will typically check to make sure that other relevant regulators have already approved the research. The DEA may also do a site inspection and run background checks on key personnel before finalizing approval.As Louise Newman wrote, the DEA enforces regulations about many details of using these substances. One important matter is how you dispose of excess drug at the end of a project. In the old days, I am told, researchers would pour chemicals down the drain. Modern concerns about environmental contamination and the potential for diversion of drugs have given rise to a small, heavily regulated industry of those who are licensed to destroy drugs. The technical DEA term is "reverse distributors".If concerned about purity, researchers can request from the company a "certificate of analysis". This will give results of tests on the specific chemical batch that confirm the identity and purity. Thus, unlike street users, researchers do not usually have problems with batch-to-batch variation or misrepresentation of compounds.One infamous exception to this was the case of George Ricaurte and colleagues, who were forced to retract several papers (ca 2002) after they learned that they had given methamphetamine instead of MDMA to research animals. It is not clear how this error occurred. RTI, the company supplying the 'MDMA', has supplied researchers with chemicals for many years without incident, raising questions about whether the mix-up happened in the Ricaurte lab.Another possible way to get drugs for research is to make them. One reason to do this is that companies are often unwilling to supply drugs that will be given to animals or people out of concern for potential liability, even if the researcher has proper approvals. In the past, I wasted a fair amount of time on the phone trying to restart orders that had stalled once the company actually read what we (legally) intended to do. In the study my colleagues and I conducted on the effects of MDA in humans (published in PLOS One), we synthesized our own MDA. Of course, we worked with the FDA to establish and run a series of tests that would confirm the identity and purity of the drug. In these situations, the FDA will often require 'Good Manufacturing Practices' be followed, so that the pedigree of every reagent used in the synthesis is documented.So drug users deal with preparations of unknown contents while legitimate researchers work with effectively pure compounds. As a result, users can experience effects 'on the street' that researchers do not see in the laboratory. The causes of these discrepancies are unfortunately really hard to figure out.