WHAT’S IN IT? Speed most often comes in powder form, which may be either amphetamine sulfate or methamphetamine. It varies in colour from white through to beige, orange and pink, and anywhere in between. The powder may be very fine and powdery or more coarse and crystalline, depending on how much it has been cut and with what. Speed has a bitter, chemical taste and sometimes has a very strong smell, so often people taste or smell it before they buy it to make sure they are actually getting what they pay for. But the smell and taste won’t always guarantee that it is actually speed. The chemicals that are used to make speed were made illegal in the late 1980s - early 1990s. This means that backyard chemists making speed have had to find new things to put into it. It also means that now, what we call “speed” is really a whole family of different but related drugs, each with its own recipe. Police seizures of speed, which have been analysed, show that the average level of amphetamine was only 5% throughout the 1990s. The average purity has started to increase, but even so, chances are that if you buy a gram of powder speed, most of what you get is going to be substances other than speed, like sugar or glucose, bicarbonate soda, ephedrine, pseudoephedrine, vitamins, epsom salts or some other substance. There is NO quality control on street drugs, and no guarantee that what you are buying is safe.
4 Speed 2009.indd 4
5/7/09 9:36:20 PM