Cocaine
Synthesis

Synthesizing cocaine could eliminate the high visibility and low reliability of offshore sources and international smuggling, replacing them with clandestine domestic laboratories, as are common for illicit methamphetamine, but is rarely done. Natural cocaine remains the lowest cost and highest quality supply of cocaine. Formation of inactive stereoisomers (cocaine has four chiral centres – 1 R 2 R, 3 S, and 5 S, two of them dependent, hence eight possible stereoisomers) plus synthetic by-products limits the yield and purity.
combination:two_responses, oulipo:avoid_letter[e]