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Is 2C-B a research chemical?
| Q: |
Is 2C-B a research chemical? |
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| A: |
No, we do not consider 2C-B a research chemical, and have never given it that designation.
Erowid's 2C-B Vault was created in 1996, four years before we published the Research Chemicals Vault in 2000. In 1998 we were using the term "research chemical" in private conversations with close colleagues, and first saw it used as such by others in email lists in January 1999. The Research Chemical designation indicates that a substance has a short history of human use and has not undergone sufficient experimental research to characterize types and severity of health risks.
Millions of people had experimented with 2C-B by the mid-1990s, and by 2000 at least two laboratory experiments using non-human mammals had been conducted. Neither found evidence of toxicity. Unfortunately, those experiments showing no toxicity were not published. It is a disappointing fact that research studies showing a recreational drug is not toxic often go unpublished because funding agencies are not interested in promoting that message.
Erowid was told via private communications by multiple researchers that 2C-B was injected into rats at high doses and the rats did not die nor did they show obvious signs of brain damage.1,2 But, as the United States' National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), the largest funding agency in the world for research on psychoactive drugs, says: They don't study drugs that don't harm people.
This "scientific" surreality makes it hard to move drugs that start out as research chemicals to a different status.
In January 2017, our criteria for removing a drug from the Research Chemical group would be something like:
- At least a million human uses (estimated)
- At least 200 solid experience reports available to Erowid (not all need to be public)
- At least a ten-year span since the chemical's first documented human use
- At least some medical research conducted on the substance
Although these criteria are somewhat soft, they are a starting place.
In 2012 we were excited about the development of a methodology for evaluating experimental chemicals under the New Zealand "Psychoactive Substances Bill". That measure was stopped before it had a chance to establish a procedure by which society can judge which newly-available substances are least harmful.
In 2014, a website erroneously reported that Erowid had removed the Research Chemical designation from 2C-B. This misstatement was mentioned and linked to in dozens of discussions and published articles between 2014 and 2016. It was never true, and the authors eventually retracted the article in December 2016.3
References:
1. Private communication with George Ricaurte in Feb 2001 at "The State of Ecstasy" conference in San Francisco. Ricaurte stated that he had given rats 2C-B using a similar protocol to his MDMA neurotoxicity research, that he had not seen similar overheating, neurotoxicity, or behavioral damage, and that he did not pursue further research with 2C-B.
2. Private communication with anonymous research staff from a different lab. Negative results for neurotoxicity and behavioral toxicity with 2C-B in small mammals.
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[ Research ]
[ 2C-B ]
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