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Comment by analog31 | Hacker News Reader

>>> For example, if I want a highly toxic chemical, how difficult it would be to procure that in the US vs China?

With trustworthy composition and purity?

I work with researchers in both the US and China. Definitely easier to procure in the US.

Unless it's on a specific list of chemicals that the DEA has decided are bad and need to be monitored. Even toluene is on the list!

This is nonsense. "Monitored" is not the same as "unavailable", any chemistry lab worth its name has the means and procedures to acquire toluene in pretty much any quantity it wants. As long as you have the required licenses, keep careful administration and can produce said administration during inspections, there is nothing to worry about.

Does all that administration and licensing magically happen for free and take zero time? It's stupid extra overhead for something as fundamental as toluene that Chinese labs don't have to follow. You're right that it's not insurmountable, but it's still stupid extra work, and the threat of randomly being investigated for doing science is hardly "nothing too worry about". Just always have every one of your papers in order or else you go to jail is hardly a way to encourage people to want to go into science.

Or having to plead the fifth when asked about your work.

Or you know, just tell the truth? Doing legal things with controlled substances is not forbidden, provided you maintain the required documentation and safety measures. The point of the regulation is to prevent untrained randos from making TNT and synthesizing MDMA, not to prevent any toluene use at all.

I personally don't have any issue with explosive precursors being controlled more carefully, no. If it means we have to spend some more time and money organizing safe storage, that is a worthwhile price to deter the religious nut next door synthesizing TNT in their bathroom or having their own private fentanyl lab to poison the populace with.

The point of regulation is not to protect the producer, but to protect everyone else who has to live in the same society. If the Chinese make another tradeoff and sacrifice some of their citizens in the name of greater riches for the billionaire class, that is their problem.

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