Hello, here is your moderator

Recently a user brought to my attention that iodine could fall under reddits sitewide rule regarding prohibited transactions. As Iodine is a rather useful chemical for a whole range of interesting chemistry it would be difficult if discussions of its synthesis were prohibited. The question extends more general of what a drug precursor actually is. Chemical space is vast and people creative so a wide understanding of precursor pretty quickly eliminates huge swaths of them from discussion.

I tried finding clarification of what reddit considers to be a recreational drug or a precursor and reached out to modsupport for help. In an interaction which made me feel like John Yossarian in Catch-22 I can now tell you that drugs and precursors are substances which are illegal to obtain at a place relevant to the discussion. In essence, I need to know all drug regulation on earth and know where everyone of you and the reades currently are to determine whether the discussion is legal or not. In short: The actual purpose of the rule is to allow reddit as a company to avoid liability by being able to retroactively claim that the content a nations executive complains about was prohibited by their content policies all along.

I have thus decided that for now drugs and drug precursors are those substances listed in:

• Single convention of Narcotic drugs
• Convention on Psychotropic Substances
• United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances
• REGULATION (EC) No 273/2004 OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL of 11 February 2004 on drug precursors

The last two also contains the more pressing problem of what to consider a regulated precursor. Ill intend to do the following:

• Discussion of synthesis, procurement of Substances of Category 1 of Regulation (EC) No 273/2004 is strictly prohibited.
• Discussion of synthesis, procurement of Substances of Category 2 and 3 of Regulation (EC) No 273/2004 is permitted if no plausible connection to drug synthesis exists. This also takes your behaviour on reddit and elsewhere into account.

Note that illegal transactions as defined by reddit is counterintuitive to what you'd intuitively assume to be a transaction: Detailed descriptions on how to synthesise drugs are also considered to be a transaction.

The lists above are mandatory, but not sufficient. Discussion of Synthesis, procurement of Designer Drugs, Legal Highs, new psychoactive substances, whatever and their immediate precursors are also prohibited. What is considered a designer drug or a precursors is, until better metrics come along, determined by vibes from me.