Genetically Engineered Yeast Makes It Possible To Brew Morphine

PvtVoid writes: The New York times reports that newly developed yeast strains will soon make it possible to create morphine from fermentation of sugar. While no one has claimed to make morphine in lab from scratch yet, concerns are already being raised about potential abuse. According to the Times article: "This rapid progress in synthetic biology has set off a debate about how — and whether — to regulate it. Dr. Oye and other experts said this week in a commentary in Nature Chemical Biology that drug-regulatory authorities are ill prepared to control a process that will benefit the heroin trade much more than the prescription painkiller industry. The world should take steps to head that off, they argue, by locking up the bioengineered yeast strains and restricting access to the DNA that would let drug cartels reproduce them.

Comments

Sudafed

[jdavidb]

Forget morphine - could I just get a way to simply, legally obtain sudafed without rigamarole at the pharmacy?

Re:Sudafed

[countSudoku()]

We KNOW what your up too, Pablo Escapebar! The cops are on their way to your drug lab to confiscate your chems, inhalers, and any other paraphernalia like shaving razor replacement packs and Q-tips. The jig is UP!

Re:Sudafed

[damn_registrars]

Forget morphine - could I just get a way to simply, legally obtain sudafed without rigamarole at the pharmacy?

I recall someone posted the directions for how to make sudafed from crystal meth. Being as the latter is easier to buy than the former, you could start with that. For obvious reasons I'm not going to search for that method myself.

I don't recall if you get drain cleaner back out of it or not, though.

Re:Sudafed

[Anonymous Coward]

Fun fact: the word is "rigmarole," not "rigamarole."

I know nobody cares. Further evidence for this: nearly everyone gets that wrong.

Re:Sudafed

[russotto]

Pseudoephederine is already produced from yeast.

Of course, if it becomes cheaper to produce opiates from yeast than from current processes, trying to keep the yeasts secret or locked up will be futile. The stuff reproduces itself; all it takes is one well-bribed or entrepreneurial employee.

Re:Sudafed

[Holi]

Fun fact, doesn't change the fact that its spelled wrong.

Re:Sudafed

[garyisabusyguy]

Whole new angle on home-brewing and probably a heck of a lot less obvious than a field of poppies growing on your property

I thought that the development of coal-tar based opioid synthesis processes in the US was supposed to support the wholesale eradication of poppies and black market production of opium and heroin.

That obviously failed because farmers want the income, so in the EU they allow farmers to grow poppies, then purchase the entire crop in bulk for use in their pharmaceutical processes. This allows the farmers to get the income and reduces the opiates in the black market

When will the US stop deluding itself and simply purchase bulk poppies from farmers in Central and South America who simply want a source of income? This will reduce the number of people who trade in the black market and reduce the opium available for heroin production

Re:Sudafed

[ShanghaiBill]

all it takes is one well-bribed or entrepreneurial employee.

Or one employee that believes in personal freedom, and also realizes that yeast produced opiates will shut down the cartels, hurt the Taliban, reduce violence, and pretty much make the world a better place ... unless you are either a criminal or a cop.

Re:Sudafed

[bobstreo]

Or one employee that believes in personal freedom, and also realizes that yeast produced opiates will shut down the cartels, hurt the Taliban, reduce violence, and pretty much make the world a better place ... unless you are either a criminal or a cop.

Unless, of course, the government goes on a pogrom against any large scale yeast operation, in which case only organizations with the resources to operate one illicitly will be able to benefit: the cartels and the Taliban.

Oh the humanity, Budweiser and Miller breweries shut down by the feds.

Re:Sudafed

[dj245]

We had this "better world" 130ish years ago. It was not better, addicts were becoming a huge problem for the society - the actual reason drugs became illegal. And yes, there still was a war in Afghanistan.

Yes, but 130 years ago we were still in an "all hands on deck" global economy. We now have the ability to produce all the things that the world needs or wants with far less than 100% of the population. The global economy no longer needs a significant portion of the population to participate in the economy. How do you solve that? Having a class of people who do nothing but drugs all day long may actually be somewhat helpful in solving the problem of what to do with all the people that society doesn't need.

Re:Sudafed

[Anon-Admin]

Someone should read history.

Drug laws in the US are less than 100 years old. It was the late 1930's for most of them. I would suggest you read the arguments in congress while debating the law. It seems that the group FOR the law was arguing that these substances empowered the lesser races. (Im making it polite and not using the slang they used)

Drug laws in the US had more to due with racial control than they did with helping the addicts.

Just to make a point stoners are considered "lazy, irresponsible, thieves, untrustworthy, etc" All the same stereotypes used to describe blacks in the 30's, 40's, and 50's.

Re:Sudafed

[rockout]

It does, actually. In fact, the shifting spelling of that word has already entered the spelling that you don't like into the dictionary.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rigamarole

Definition of RIGAMAROLE: variant of rigmarole

Re:Sudafed

[FictionPimp]

Or worse, this shit becomes like wild yeast and the next time I brew beer I have to worry about creating a drink full of dope instead of just worrying a wild fermentation might just make it taste bad.

Re:Sudafed

[tepples]

Oh the humanity, Budweiser and Miller breweries shut down by the feds.

It happened a century ago.

Re:Sudafed

[drkoemans]

Slashdot needs to change it's subheading to be a bit more inclusive. News for nerds, pedantry, advertisements, occasionally stuff that matters... in that order.

Re:Sudafed

[swb]

The Harrison Narcotics Tax Act was passed in 1914, but the impetus started closer to 1901.

While it's a common theme in anti-drug control rhetoric to blame racism for drug bans, I think the race/drug tie-in is possibly something that happened later and not a prime mover for the origin of drug controls. I think once drugs were already illegal, the laws were adjusted in ways that made them more effective tools to use against people deemed undesirable.

Personally I think the laws against drug use were probably at least as much motivated by industrialists who saw drug use as an obstacle in using low-skilled poor people in the new mass-production factories. Prior to the assembly line, I think a fair amount of industrial work was little more than scaling up the work of skilled artisans, people who probably had internalized a certain amount of self-discipline and work ethic. They were probably also drunks, too, but by virtue of their holding a skilled trade they were sort of self-selected into the group of people who could more or less hold their liquor.

Once you got the assembly line and mass production involved, the growth in industrial employment required large workforces of unskilled workers from the lower classes of society, a demographic at the time that came from cultures where alcohol use was high and who probably used drugs and alcohol more like a crude anti-depressant tonic against the fairly harsh standard of living of being poor in the late 19th century.

But you can't build an industrial empire with people who see a subsistence living under the influence as more desirable than industrial wage slavery, so better to criminalize their substance use and make work a slightly more palatable option than prison.

It was really no different for the Harrison Act -- the impetus was some Protestant religious figure appalled with opium-consuming native savages in the Philippines who knew that he wasn't going to convert them into good little Protestants if chasing the dragon and lying in the sun was an alternative.

I think a lot of the opposition to marijuana legalization really boils down to this -- a lot of moral cluckers who worry that if Johnny smokes pot, he won't be enthusiastic about going $150.000 in debt for a college degree and buying a house in the suburbs -- he'll think that it'd make much more sense to, in the words of Grandmaster Flash, "...learn to smoke reefer and be a street sweeper."

Society *needs* bodies on the treadmill to keep it going. People who use substances tend to give a lot less of a shit about the treadmill.

Re:Sudafed

[ganjadude]

fun fact, I hate fun facts

Re:Sudafed

[ganjadude]

all you have to do is read the propaganda at the time and watch the videos of the day to see that it was in fact racist at the time watch reefer madness if you dont believe me

Re:Sudafed

[meerling]

True, but for a large scale operation you are going to want to have a bioreactor for both efficiency and scale, not to mention reducing the dead giveaway large quantity of people to tend the more manual methods.
Further complication include issues with production of the new substance possibly interfering with the lifecycle of the host itself. (That's the yeast if anyone didn't get that.) And let's not forget the separation and purification of the desired product.
You do know that they use microbes to make a number of different things, such as human insulin and interferon? Just look up some of the history of those developments, and you'll get a hint of some possible difficulties. Besides, there was a market for large quantities of cheap human insulin & interferon, while the previous methods of production were horribly inefficient and could never even come close to the demand.
I'm going to hazard a guess that the criminal cartels would be opposed to this technology because it would be more expensive to the them to set up, would require workers of a higher skill & training, would cut out entire chunks of their existing structure, and would be easily capable of flooding the market and suppressing prices.
Besides, other than banning the opiate producing strain, which only takes one leak to effectively neutralize that ban, what are you going to do? Ban genetically altered strains of microbes, and tobacco? Sorry, but I'd rather shoot the asshole that tries to do that, my life depends on one of those products, and so do a LOT of other peoples. Maybe you just want to ban the research into making illegal products. That would be a little better, but still futile. Eventually it will be easy enough to do that a talented high school student will someday succeed. Additionally, if it's not banned worldwide, someone will eventually do it someplace it's not illegal, and then there is the distinct possibility that it will get loose.
Of course, there is still something people are not looking at, their strain produces morphine, a controlled, but legal, substance. Yeah, it can be turned into heroin, but so can all the legal morphine which is usually made from FLOWERS that people grow! It's used in medicine. I was once in a hospital ward and I was the only patient not receiving morphine. (The reason for that doesn't matter.) So there IS a legal trade in the product produced by that yeast, but because it can be used to make an illegal one, some people want to ban it. You know, that's not a wise path to tread upon. If something can be banned because something illegal can be made from/with it, how long until everything is banned? You know politicians, give them an inch, and they'll run you over with your own vehicle and drag you a mile down the road.

Re: Sudafed

[guruevi]

Budweiser/Miller make beer? With yeast? I always thought they made it with water flavored with leftover hops from a real brewery.

Re:Sudafed

[rea1l1]

The US was founded as a republic, a structure designed solely to protect & defend the rights of the people.
Today, this organization is used to limit and suppress the rights of the people through intimidation and force.

Society does NOT need bodies on a treadmill unless you're using society as a massive global offensive weapon.
Most working individuals within a "modern" society DO NOT PRODUCE A PHYSICAL PRODUCT.

"We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian-Darwinian theory, he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living." -- Buckminster Fuller

Re: Sudafed

[Anonymous Coward]

And the products which replaced it are useless. I notice the party of small government has yet to get the government out if that part of our lives. The whole behind the counter/mandatory ID thing is one of the most intrusive, idiotic things in the history of this country and a testament to the social, economic, and freedom disaster that is the war on drugs. End it.

As to this situation, how about we, you know, stop locking people up for wanting to briefly escape the miserable reality we force on too many and start offering proper treatment (including proper pain treatment where applicable) to those who need it? Addiction is no joke, but the crimes that go with it are largely the government's creation. They empower these drug dealers the same way they empowered gangs during prohibition. In a way they deserve each other, but we all end up paying for it.

Re:Sudafed

[Hartree]

It's widely enough used that it's listed as a variant in the link the OP gave.

That said, you're spot on about teleporters.

I've been saying Kirk et al were a bunch of zombies for decades.

Re:Sudafed

[lister king of smeg]

and the next time I brew beer I have to worry about creating a drink full of dope

You mean you accidentally brew super beer

Re: Sudafed

[amiga3D]

It's like we're incapable of learning from our mistakes and just keep repeating them over an over endlessly. How I wish people could just quit saying "they should make a law." That horrible, ignorant phrase has caused more harm than any other.

Re: Sudafed

[pspahn]

I'd be curious, then, to know your explanation why the US hops farmers all got screwed when AB and InBev consolidated? AB had been propping up the farmers by purchasing hops even when they didn't need them and stockpiling the reserves. InBev came in and saw a chance to save a bunch of money by using the stockpile, causing farmers to go out of business.

Re:Sudafed

[DanielRavenNest]

The story is deeper than that. The Chinese liked to get paid in silver for their products (tea, porcelain, silk). Unfortunately silver is what the British money was made of (the pound sterling meant a pound of sterling silver = 92.5% pure). So it was creating a currency shortage. Britain thus wanted a product to balance trade and stop the silver outflow. Opium was that product.

The Chinese didn't want their people hooked on Opium, so they made it illegal. British trading companies that supplied the opium (it was grown in India at the time) formed a cartel to bring it in illegally, thus becoming the first drug cartel. When their people got arrested and goods seized, the British government forced China to submit in what is known as the Opium Wars. They acquired Hong Kong in the process. Later, the now legalized trading companies needed financing for the ships to deliver the expanded opium trade. So they founded the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Company. Now known as HSBC, one of the largest banks in the world, it is no stranger to laundering money for cartels, because it was*founded* by drug cartel members. To this day they print paper bank notes (currency) for Hong Kong. This makes money laundering really easy, because they can give you a suitcase of brand new money, with no traceable history.

Re: Sudafed

[AvitarX]

I actually find the psudo sudafefvery effective, but also makes me feel funny.

Re: Sudafed

[AvitarX]

... Psudo sudafed very...

Still haven't figured out the mobile site, sorry.

Re:Sudafed

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Spelling comes from wheat? Learn something new every day.

Re:Sudafed

[ChunderDownunder]

Next Australians will be stopped at airport security for smuggling.

Security Goon: "We detected a suspicious dark slurry in your luggage"
Bloke: "Strewth mate, I'm not stupid enough to bring drugs into a country, with the tragic deaths of Chan and Sukumaran..."
SG: "The canister gave off a salty odour. We fed a sample to our narcotics canine Charlie, who is now convulsing on the floor"
Bloke: "Sorry um that's just my Vegemite. I have it on toast for breakfast"
SG: "You eat that stuff? Surely not!"
Bloke: "Honest to Warnie, I swear. Got any bread on ya?"
SG: "(sniffs and dry retches) No one could stomach that!"
Security Goon 2: "Chemical analysis reveals a high concentration of morphine. Lock him up for ten years"

Re:Sudafed

[Khyber]

Actually it would probably be considered closer to laudanum than beer.

Re:Sudafed

[advocate_one]

When will the US stop deluding itself and simply purchase bulk poppies from farmers in Central and South America who simply want a source of income? This will reduce the number of people who trade in the black market and reduce the opium available for heroin production

Because then the CIA would have no source of 'black' income and means to bribe officials/governments with...

Taliban tally...

[harvey the nerd]

...in other news, so many Taliban are going to divorce their 3rd and 4th wives due to low opium sales.

Major changes in many countries

[amorsen]

If we eliminated the need to grow opium, a some countries would find their economies transformed. Imagine Afghanistan without opium financing various criminal factions. We just need to figure out how to make cocaine without coca, and Middle America would be changed too.

Of course that relies on the secret getting out. Otherwise we are still stuck with the morass of violent crime.

Re:Major changes in many countries

[amorsen]

There has been practically zero progress on handling the demand side. Doing so would require a radical rethink of how Western countries deal with drugs and drug addiction. This is not likely to happen in the next 20 years at least, and it is stupid to condemn other countries to 20 more years of violence by keeping our focus on limiting supply.

Re:Major changes in many countries

[garyisabusyguy]

Unfortunately, the one effective treatment for opioid addiction is Ibogaine, and medical study or application of it in America is illegal because it is a schedule 1 drug

Yippee for 'Merica shooting itself in the foot for over 200 years

Re:Major changes in many countries

[ShanghaiBill]

oh, I dunno...figuring out how to not ensure demand stays at 100%.

An obvious first step is to start treating addiction as a medical problem rather than as a criminal problem. Maybe we should spend less on police and prison guards, and more on doctors and nurses.

Re:Major changes in many countries

[garyisabusyguy]

We already did eliminate the need to grow opium and all opioids used in American pharmaceuticals come from a coal-tar process.

This was supposed to bring about the end of illegal opium and heroin, but has not had the effect because it is very hard to get people to stop growing a plant that they can get paid lots of money for.

Countries like Hungary allow farmers to grow a limited amount of poppies, which are purchased for use in the European pharma industry. This allows the farmers to make money and keeps it from becoming heroin

There is no reason to believe that creating new ways to synthesize opioids will reduce the growing of poppies

Re:Major changes in many countries

[dj245]

There has been practically zero progress on handling the demand side. Doing so would require a radical rethink of how Western countries deal with drugs and drug addiction. This is not likely to happen in the next 20 years at least, and it is stupid to condemn other countries to 20 more years of violence by keeping our focus on limiting supply.

In Canada (at least in Sydney, Nova Scotia), addicts get their fix right at the hospital. For free.

It seems stupid at first, but it is extremely effective in reducing all kinds of crime related to drugs and addiction. Nobody there is breaking into houses or summer cabins looking for painkillers or goods to pawn. Nobody is stealing car stereos and pawning them to finance their habit. The number of people mixing dangerous chemicals in their house or garage is reduced. Why bother with all that when you just go to the hospital and get your legal high for free? Product originating from Taliban-controlled areas can't compete with free.

If Marijuana is more your style, they have medical marijuana laws and lax enforcement of recreational use. The end result is that local people grow it in their basements, cutting out any foreign supplier or middlemen. Marijuana isn't free, but I have yet to hear of any case where someone broke the law in order to get money to buy weed.

Re:Major changes in many countries

[garyisabusyguy]

You are playing word games

An addict can either pay for heroin, or pay for a substitute like methadone (assuming that they want to get off of heroin)

If they decide to use heroin for their addiction, then they are criminals because there is no legal way to get heroin in America.
This is very expensive and in many cases requires that they either steal from others, or sell heroin themselves. These are both criminal activities

We have a lot of 'prevention' activities going on right now. They seem to be ineffective. One big problem with them is that they have created a large blackmarket infrastructure that is particularly good at finding and supplying new customers.

Portugal has decriminalized all drugs and as a result reduced the number of new users, which is to say that decriminalization is the path to prevention

Try selling that idea in America

Re:Major changes in many countries

[garyisabusyguy]

Possession of heroin is a felony

The theory is that having a felony for possession allows the police to pressure the defendant into turning over their supplier

The theory goes onto suggest that they can use this technique to gain knowledge of and arrest the kingpins of the drug syndicate

This has not been demonstrated in reality where most of the people serving time for drug possession are wither users or low level stooges used to transport the products

Re:Major changes in many countries

[rea1l1]

That was intentional. The people were never supposed to get comfortable. That would result in individual creativity, personal independence, and thus a loss in profits & control.

Yeah good luck with that!

[Anonymous Coward]

I think its inevitable that the drug cartels will find a way to get this. The answer to the drug problem is legalisation and regulation, treat addiction as the disease it is!

Re:Yeah good luck with that!

[garyisabusyguy]

Interesting...

Drug cartels make money because drugs are illegal

Therefore, politicians that work to keep drugs illegal are enabling drug cartels to make money

Would it be going too far to wonder if the drug cartels would bother to support the election of politicians who work to keep drugs illegal?

Re:Yeah good luck with that!

[Khashishi]

If, by drug cartels, you mean Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and Novartis, then yes, they will find a way to get this.

Re:Yeah good luck with that!

[Frobnicator]

Drug cartels make money because drugs are illegal

No, drugs are regulated.

After a whole bunch of deaths, addictions, permanent damage, and otherwise destroyed lives, laws regulating medicine were established to help protect people both from scammers and also from their own ignorance. Back in the late 1800's morphine was available to anyone and was widely abused, then in 1895 Bayer launched heroin as a less addictive substitute sold directly to the public, only to have it lead to even more drug abuse problems. Drug stores were not regulated and would frequently swap out relatively expensive drugs with other compounds. Many drugs were sold as tinctures, which the store could heavily dilute with alcohol.

Too many "snake oil salesmen", too many drug abuses, too many fake drugs, too many overdoses, and over time people demanded rules and regulations.

Today there are regulations in most nations.

Chemicals that had a significant reaction are regulated, not illegal. In the US that means five different classifications of drugs, from Schedule 1 (no accepted clinical use, limited research use only), through Schedule 5 over-the-counter (readily available preparations including OTC drugs). Potentially dangerous or addictive preparations require a physician's direction. Drug stores are required to meet strict standards to ensure the exact prescribed medicine is given out rather than diluted or fake products. That is a GOOD THING. That is how you know your heart medication or allergy pill is not a sugar pill, or insulin wasn't replaced with saline, or your child's antibiotic for pneumonia wasn't swapped out with bubblegum flavored liquor.

In this case of morphine-producing yeast, that would fall under a Schedule 2 product, same as morphine, and require the same oversight to help reduce abuse and misuse of the highly addictive compounds.

Reshape prohibition

[edtice1559]

Hopefully this reshapes our modern prohibition. Whether or not laws change, this stuff will now be manufactured in small facilities. No need to control large swaths of land. The opium farmers will go from terrorized to abandoned. Don't know whether that will be good for them or not. No more smuggling loads around the world. Just import some bacteria and start producing. Should increase competition in the market, too, and drive the price down. Less lucrative to control the inner city distribution points so those areas will go from terrorized to abandoned too. Should be interesting to see this unfold. I hope for the best.

Re: Reshape prohibition

[Dunbal]

Who gives @#$*( if people start brewing narcotics at home.

The same people who take the time to airbrush and blur out a boob on a Picasso, that's who. The best part is this kind of person thinks it is doing the world a favor.

Re: Reshape prohibition

[plopez]

The health care industry was unregulated until about the 20's. So many people died that the FDA and a host of health and sanitation laws were pass. Then the death rate started to drop.

People forget that for a long time going to a hospital actually increased your odds of dying.

Re: Reshape prohibition

[HornWumpus]

Most people still die in hospitals. Avoid them if you can.

Re:Reshape prohibition

[Anonymous Coward]

some bacteria

Pet peeve: Yeasts are not bacteria, they are fungi.

They can't stop tons of heroin

[Anonymous Coward]

But they can prevent even a few spores from getting into the hands of the cartels.
Truthfully it would be the cartels who would fight a desperate drug war to keep this production democratizing yeast out of the hands of home brew street dealers and junkies killing off their trillion dollar middleman industry and their other side of the drug war profits with it.
This is dangerous as it would take all of the violence and money form the heroin trade.

Fan-tastic!

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Now buying homebrewing gear will join buying hydroponic gardening equipment on the list of 'completely legal things most likely to cause the DEA to batter down your door and shoot your dog.'

That'll be fun.

Here you go....

[Ellis D. Tripp]

heterodoxy.cc/meowdocs/pseudo/pseudosynth.pdf

How?

[grasshoppa]

I'm not sure how they hope to contain such a yeast strain. Sure, they can lock it up *now*, but for how long will that last? It'll only take a single corrupt employee, or group of employees, being offered more money than they could ever hope to make in several lifetimes. Then it's out in the wild. Unless they plan on building in some kind of critical vulnerability in the strain, any home brewer can replicate the yeast with ease. Even if they do build in a critical vulnerability, it'll be an "addon" and thus, possible to disable.

I foresee another "War on Drugs" coming, where the objective in unobtainable. Fortunately after the first round of funding, the objective becomes irrelevant ( of course, the cynic in me is YELLING that the objective IS the funding..but I digress ).

Re:How?

[hankwang]

"any home brewer can replicate the yeast with ease." I wouldn't be so sure of that. If this yeast is slow to replicate compared to wild yeast strains that float around in the air, it may be quite difficult to keep your strain from getting outcompeted by other strains unless you have a cleanroom facility at home.

Re:Sweet...Breaking Bad reboot storyline in 2025

[dmbasso]

No, no, no! This time it will be Pasteur!

Imagine auto-brewery syndrome with this...

[Rhacman]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...

"Auto-brewery syndrome, also known as gut fermentation syndrome, is a rare medical condition in which intoxicating quantities of ethanol are produced through endogenous fermentation within the digestive system."

Now imagine this with a yeast that produces morphine...

Re:Imagine auto-brewery syndrome with this...

[slew]

Now imagine this with a yeast that produces morphine...

Or just a standard yeast infection...

Re:This will make the Republicans so happy,s...

[ChrisMaple]

Yes, I'm sure the Crips and Bloods, and the south of the border cartels, are just full of Republicans.

Why fight it?

[bistromath007]

Let's just make opiates the opiate of the masses. They're way more effective than what we've been using instead.

Destroy the cartels

[ChrisMaple]

Easy home brewing of mind-degrading drugs is the drug cartels' worst nightmare. Cartels disappear almost overnight as US citizens can brew drugs at far below the cartel cost of production.

Just wait for it...

[newcastlejon]

The genome will be on pastebin faster than you can say "DeCSS".

What can you do about it?

[MikeRT]

At this point, anyone who uses hard drugs in the US is doing so after years of being told all of the nasty things they do to your body. There's no curing that level of stupid. There's a percentage of the population that in the absence of morphine, will abuse bath salts and model glue. No law can fix that complete lack of long term thinking.

Re:What can you do about it?

[Khashishi]

A lot of people who abuse drugs do so because their lives suck. Maybe they don't care about their long term health because they have no hope for the future and don't care if it kills them. Efforts to penalize them for using drugs simply makes their lives suck more and their future even more hopeless.

Finally, an end to the War on Drugs

[penguinoid]

There's already a drug with many harmful effects that is widely abused, that was legally (as in, the Constitution was modified) banned, and is made by yeast.

All your genes are belong to us!

[pla]

and restricting access to the DNA that would let drug cartels reproduce them

One problem there - Humans contain the DNA for producing morphine. It works so well precisely because out body already uses it to regulate our natural pain response.

Re:the inevitable

[Dunbal]

Don't worry morphine is not temperature stable and will break down at bread-baking temperatures. But seriously, don't make bread with it. If you're worried about contamination of regular yeast, however, then remember only a really really small part of your yeast will not be wild-type. Unless you went out of your way to select for the genetically engineered yeast in your sample, you're getting plain old yeast (with maybe a trace of genetically engineered yeast after many years of this strain being commonly available). There's no reason to think that fermenting to morphine provides any evolutionary benefit to yeast versus fermenting to ethanol. So you won't be overdosing on opioid bread just yet.

"Restricting Access to DNA" R.O.F.L.

[burni2]

You want yeast DNA?

Lick your hand.
Lick your feet.
Lick your *beep*.

And the best thing D.N.A. is a puzzle, but a very logical one.

When you have watched bio engineering students doing their *basic* experiments with basic yeast you will be astonished what they can achieve by just playing around.

DNA is a perfect self assembling puzzle you will quickly see how things work out.

Basically what I want to lay out is that there is not just even the slightest chance of succeeding to conceal that information from drug makers, because they will find out otherwise because in DNA if it works .. you can redo steps or start variations and your own research.

So yes, the cartels will find a way and hey .. they won the war on drugs haven't they?

Also in case genetic engineering is too complex there is still Afghanistan.

1.) So you have many (and I mean many) "underpaid" bio engineering students.

2.) Decent equipment makes everything easier, but you can built that equipment, that knowledge cannot be subdued(it's too widespread)

3.) You have "fungus"(yeast) DNA everywhere

4.) Variations - If you want to find an unknown strain .. go to a brothel, public toilet, the more cultures clash .. the more variations you will find in one spot.

5.) you have scientific journals (and you also have a black list of crap journals)

6.) Money = Resources (Hey we are talking here about drug cartels that have no problem to just loose cocain worth being 200 mUSD)

7.) We have a black pharma market that produces counterfight - and at a 50% chance high quality - drugs for old mens problems from industrial scale made basic chemicals. And nobody can stop them - or wants to.

Re:Where's the Tea Party When You Need Them?

[spauldo]

We could spend one quarter of the money on treatment programs and end up with fewer drug abusers than we've managed with the "War on Drugs".

That's not how libertarians work.

It's more like:

1) Abolish laws that make drugs illegal, thus saving money on prisons and law enforcement, and lower taxes accordingly
2) Let addicted people pay for their own treatment, "entitlement" and whatnot
3) Wealthy Americans install better security or live in gated communities, paid for by the savings in taxes
4) Who cares about everyone else? If they were important, they'd have money.

Re:Yeast Banned

[HornWumpus]

The only thing that stops you from guzzling Laudanum is the law?

In the USA all drugs are _readily_ available to any adult that want's them. Laws mean nothing.

Triticum aestivum spelta

[tepples]

Fun fact: Spelt (Triticum aestivum spelta) is a subspecies of wheat that has become more popular over the past couple decades for needing fewer fertilizers than common wheat. Thus "spelled" has come to be spelled "spelled" to distinguish it from spelt.

And America south of 49 degrees north latitude has been not an English colony for nearly 240 years.

Re:Triticum aestivum spelta

[RabidReindeer]

The last time I saw the word "smelt" outside of metallurgy was in The Hobbit.

The English language has been losing its grammatical nuances for a long time, which is why we don't wear shoon on our feet anymore. Although I suspect that the sheer weight of so many non-native English speakers participating these days has had an accelerating effect.

Britain will just have to console itself with the fact that Americans are giving up on "gray" in favor of "gree", I mean, "grey".

But that's a horse of another colour.

Re:Triticum aestivum spelta

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Really? We have a small oily fish by that name. Also known to pioneers as a Candlefish, because you could catch them by the bucketfull, smoke them, and either eat them or actually *use them as candles* in your log cabin for months after.

Re:Triticum aestivum spelta

[jblues]

Fun fact: Spelt (Triticum aestivum spelta) is a subspecies of wheat that has become more popular over the past couple decades for needing fewer fertilizers than common wheat. Thus "spelled" has come to be spelled "spelled" to distinguish it from spelt.

And America south of 49 degrees north latitude has been not an English colony for nearly 240 years.

As I understand it Spelt is wheat's wild ancestor. Now that its being cultivated there will probably be selective pressure through that process turning in to something else. Perhaps we could call the new stuff 'Spelled'

But on a very serious note: How long before these new strains of yeast become the dominant strains? It sounds like Ergot all over again, with a new twist. In the middle ages a fungus called Ergot got into Rye grain stores causing trip-out LSD like effects. Folks had visions, heard the voice of god and generally went around doing all kinds of crazy things. Witch hunts, random decapitations, etc. But it all remained just under the medieval radar, since folks were more than half-way mad anyway. This time a slice of morphine-laced soft-white will smack the people out and have them doze around like zombies all day. Again no body will notice, since that is the status quo for our age :)

Re:Triticum aestivum spelta

[youngone]

And America south of 49 degrees north latitude has been not an English colony for nearly 240 years.

What!? Why was I not told of this?

Re:the inevitable

[BronsCon]

Damn.

But...it's GMO!

[Ranbot]

No self-respecting drug addict would use franken-morphine!

Re:Where's the Tea Party When You Need Them?

[spauldo]

1) Your idea of a republic doesn't resemble any actual government in the world. Idealism is nice, I suppose, but that's just not the way things work. Also, I've met quite a few libertarians who believe (as did pre-civil war Democrats) that the government shouldn't be responsible for public infrastructure, such as roads. The free market - that magic bullet that fixes everything - will take care of it.

2) I was not arguing that the government would force addicts to seek treatment, only that libertarians would offer no assistance in doing so. And from what I've seen, many libertarians fully believe that no, they should not help addicts.

3) You saying this doesn't happen? Also,

4) The idea that those with money shouldn't be responsible for those without money (at least insofar as taxation is concerned) is one of the core principles of libertarianism. Anything else would be wealth redistribution. To quote one libertarian I know personally, "that's what churches are for."

Just as an aside, I do generally agree with the libertarian ideas on social issues. Too bad the rest of the Republican party doesn't.