pretty cool
Now, if I wanted, I could try making anti fly landmines.
As you undoubtedly know there is a simple but highly unstable explosive made starting from iodine. So unstable in fact it has no practical applications. I was told that if you made a SMALL batch, passed it through a paper filter, dusted the filter with powdered sugar, then cut the wet filter into postage stamp sized pieces and placed them in an area with flies, once dry the pressure of a fly landing on a piece would be enough to make it explode, along with the fly.
NI3 isn't generally QUITE that unstable (though depending on atmoshperic conditions and impurities it can be), but it is pretty rough, as is PI3, or CH3I.
Classic chemistry class prank really; as illustrated in "The Manhattan Project".
In this case, they decided to control iodine, because it's a precursor for meth production.
Yeah, Meth production is causing all kinds of problems - fer instance, when they decided that Ammonium Nitrate was double plus ungood(because of the ease with which it's turned into a low grade explosive), the Feds decided that all the Farmers should now use Anhydrous Ammonia... Except that the tweekers are now stealing it(and occasionally killing themselves in the process thereof) from big storage tanks on farms to make meth. It may have made the use of meth rise faster(easy access for tweakers to steal). Now they want to ban Anhydrous Ammonia, except that there's really no cheap effective fertilizer to replace it, so it would mean going back to AN...
Another branch that has gone after chemicals is the CPSC - they banned Aluminum powder because it's used in homemade fireworks(Now you can buy books on how to make your own "German Dark"), and they've also gone after the Model Rocketry dudes - now the web is full of recipes for making grains from stuff from Home Depot(Stump Remover) and Supermarkets(Sugar)..
Interesting....
Very.
Unfortunately, now potassium iodide is probably going to be restricted as well, no matter how common, unregulated, or useful it might be now.
After all, you might make evil iodine out of it!
Would it be too much a cliche to say "can't stop the signal"? 
Linoge is right, unfortunately.
Anyone try to buy pseudoephedrine lately? It literally takes longer to get an OTC sinus med than to get narcotic pain killers, because some moron may make something for other morons.
None of these databases are cross-referenced, and even if they were what's to stop the "cook" from telling his customers "a gram is 100 bucks + 100 sudafed tablets?"
Meanwhile, allergy sufferers everywhere - like me - get treated like criminals when we try to buy one of the safest, oldest OTC remedies out there.
On the bright side, last trip I discovered the "12-hour" version -- one in the AM/one in the PM and no more attacks in the middle of the day!
Better living through chemistry!!
DD
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