♪♪
[ Inhales deeply ]
[ Indistinct conversation ]
Hamilton: The smell of burning methaqualone
brings me back to 2013 when I sat on this very couch,
in the company of a gangster...
Whoa!
[ Laughs ]
...a dealer, and a few white pipe enthusiasts.
I've been fascinated by psychoactive drugs
my whole life.
I love to study their chemistry and impact on society.
And my work has allowed me
to investigate extraordinary substances around the world.
Yet there are still mysteries that remain.
But it was here that I found myself on the scent of a trail
that would lead me to one of the most astonishing drug mysteries
I've ever encountered.
[ Indistinct conversation ]
This is the story of the South African Quaalude.
♪♪
[ Siren wails ]
♪ Oh, ah, oh, ah, oh, ah, oh, ah ♪
I've always been fascinated by methaqualone,
a drug that was once sold in the United States
under the brand name Quaalude.
But it's a difficult drug to research
because it's all but disappeared,
with one notable exception --
South Africa.
I traveled there in 2013
because it's the last place on Earth it's still used.
What I found transcended the drug and its use.
Good to meet you.
My pleasure.
I learned the unique history of the South African Quaalude
is inextricably linked to a secret government program.
But I'll go into that later.
After my first visit in 2013, I analyzed some samples
and was surprised to find
they contained not only methaqualone,
but also diphenhydramine,
a combination that mimics the original
pharmaceutical formulation sold under the brand name Mandrax.
I was surprised the manufacturers
had such dedication to tradition.
Three years later, I decided to return
to fully understand the methaqualone
distributed on the streets.
I started in Soweto,
one of the first places I encountered the drug.
What's going on?
Chilling right now.
Hamilton.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah, I'd like to see the process you use.
♪♪
Because Mandrax is sold as a tablet,
it requires special preparation to be smoked.
[ Glass shatters ]
First, a glass bottle is broken at the neck
and stuffed with a cotton filter.
The filter is covered with a blanket of tobacco
and low-grade cannabis.
A Mandrax tablet is wrapped in paper and chewed.
And the powder is transferred into a bottle neck,
which is referred to as a white pipe.
When methaqualone is taken orally,
the user experiences muscle relaxation
and a sense of calm disinhibition.
But when the drug is smoked,
its rapid onset and increased potency
produce a rushing euphoria, and in high doses,
total loss of consciousness.
Hamilton: How do you feel right now?
The way the drug's currently used in South Africa
would be unrecognizable to the American users of the 1970s.
♪♪
Americans recall Quaalude with a rosy nostalgia,
a drug sold by pharmaceutical companies
as a nonaddictive alternative to barbiturates.
It was a relaxing drug, a love drug,
that promoted dance and uninhibited sexuality.
But it became too popular for its own good,
and restrictions on sale and prescription
were soon followed by total prohibition
in the United States.
Prohibition rarely dissuades drug use or manufacture,
but methaqualone was a rare case.
The high dose required for users to achieve a desirable effect
placed an extraordinary burden on clandestine manufacturers,
who needed large quantities of carefully watched
precursor chemicals in order to turn a small profit.
Some people believe the enduring popularity of methaqualone
in South Africa is a result of trade sanctions
imposed on the apartheid regime, which left the country
in a state of economic and cultural isolation.
Others believe it was a product
of secret government experiments.
Have any of you all heard of Wouter Basson?
What?
Wouter Basson.
What is that?
It's a drug or a what?
He was a doctor.
Dr. Basson.
He was a doctor people thought brought Mandrax
onto the street in South Africa.
No.
Never heard of him.
We are not following the history of drugs.
We are just smoking.
Hamilton: If there's one name to know in the history
of South African Mandrax, it's Wouter Basson.
In 1999, Basson was put on trial for his involvement
in a secret chemical and biological warfare program
code-named "Project Coast."
Basson claims to have weaponized street drugs
like MDMA, LSD,
and most prominently, Mandrax.
He planned to use these drugs for crowd-control purposes
in the event of an anti-apartheid uprising.
Yet the exact nature of Basson's crowd-control technique
remains uncertain.
Thanks a lot. I appreciate your time.
Nice meeting you.
It was great meeting you.
Thanks a lot.
[ Typing ]
"Dearest Wouter.
I am an American journalist writing a story
about the dismissal of your application
for a recusal hearing.
I think the charges against you amount to little more
than a witch hunt, and I'd like to write a story
that allows your perspective on this case
to reach the international media.
I had the pleasure of attending a talk you gave in 2013
and was impressed by the candor of your speech."
"When can we schedule a time to meet?
Your admirer,
Hamilton Morris."
You think "your admirer" is too much?
Your friend?
On the outskirts of Johannesburg,
I met with Jenny Wild, a human rights lawyer
who stood up against the apartheid government
to expose the drug research of Project Coast.
Wild: Project Coast was a very large-ranging project.
It involved a question of biochemical weapons,
it involved the reduction --
or strategies
to reduce the black population
of South Africa.
Probably the most serious component, really.
And chemicals -- drugs, narcotics --
were deliberately synthesized by the apartheid regime
in order to incapacitate people,
the tragedy being that they were doctors and medical people.
But, then again,
you must remember apartheid
really didn't have any scruples at all
when it came to its survival.
And there were things that went
on in this country
during that time
that makes the Nazis, frankly,
appear like a Sunday school picnic.
Beyond the weaponization of methaqualone,
Project Coast scientists claimed to have bred
super-wolf guard dogs, kept black mambas
to poison political opponents,
and planned to administer antifertility drugs
to black women under the guise of vaccination.
When I started as an advocate, I began to come into contact
with people who were becoming Mandrax addicts.
Addicts went from null to 850,000
over a very short space of time
behind a barbed wire fence
of apartheid.
Mandrax abuse is a way of life in Cape Flats,
a ghetto created by the apartheid government
as a home for the so-called "colored communities"
of greater Cape Town.
I traveled there to meet with Baba,
a Mandrax dealer I'd befriended in 2013.
How are you, my friend?
Hey.
All right.
Hey. Good to see you.
It's nice I'm meeting you again, man.
Yeah.
Is this the same place?
You had so many people here smoking Mandrax.
Yeah.
Where was the window where people would come through?
They're coming to buy through the window.
That's the financial director there.
Hamilton: You don't do that anymore?
How you feeling?
Full of...
Doing all right?
[ Humming ]
No, no, no, no.
Ha ha ha ha.
You see the smoke?
Faried: This is a good thing for the heart, for everything.
For high blood, for low blood.
Take the pain away.
I'm 63 now.
63.
♪♪
Hamilton: How do you feel?
Do you feel sleepy?
If they feel like this, they want to smoke more.
They mustn't sleep. They must smoke.
Hamilton: The user feels an initial rush of intoxication
where their body goes slack,
and they may briefly lose consciousness.
So you're coming here every three years.
But they rapidly regain their composure
and within minutes are consuming more.
It's this combination of rapid onset and short duration
that makes smoked methaqualone so addictive.
Woman: Hamilton, you okay?
I'm good, yeah.
I think I'm getting a little bit secondhand right now.
[ Laughs ] I can see.
Hmm.
[ Groans ]
♪♪
Thank you. I appreciate that.
We're gonna go with some abalone poachers later today, I think.
Okay.
Yeah.
Do you think I should poach?
Oh!
Why is it dangerous?
What, abalone?
Yeah.
What's dangerous.
What's dangerous?
Yeah.
♪♪
Hamilton: A species of South African abalone
known as Haliotis midae
has an iridescent shell with a row of small holes,
though which water escapes after aerating the gills.
The shell protects the gill and viscera from most,
but not all, marine predators.
This endangered species is the most sought-after
marine delicacy in the country.
♪♪
As savage winds blew over the Cape,
I traveled to a nearby seafood restaurant
where I arranged a dinner with a Mandrax boss
who might have some insight into the unexpected connection
between this sea snail
and a discontinued pharmaceutical hypnotic.
Man: Welcome to Panama Jack's.
I'll be your waiter this evening.
What can I get you guys to eat?
I think we should have the abalone.
Yeah.
Cheers.
Enjoy.
Hamilton: Though this restaurant caters to a niche market
for legally harvested abalone, I'm here to learn about
the other side of the abalone trade.
And then you get to take the shell home as a souvenir.
Oh!
Wow.
What do you mean?
Oh, yes. Yes.
Do that first.
You want to lead the prayer?
Okay, all right.
Okay?
Thank you, God, for this tasty gastropod,
whose flesh is... very rare and endangered
but supposedly very delicious.
And thank you for granting me the opportunity
to speak with my new friend over this tasty meal.
It is going to be very enjoyable, I'm sure.
Thanks, amen.
But as I say...
It's pretty good.
Mmm.
So I've read that Mandrax is exchanged for abalone,
or that the precursor is to manufacture Mandrax
or exchange for abalone.
Could you tell me about that connection?
There you go, there you go.
Hamilton: South African abalone is rarely consumed domestically.
Instead, the snail is exported to the world's
abalone consumption capital, China.
The delicate flavor and chewy flesh of abalone
is considered a status symbol
and renowned for its supposed aphrodisiacal properties.
The Chinese value South Africa's abalone
as much as South Africans value
Chinese N-acetylanthranilic acid.
With each buyer possessing a commodity that's inexpensive
in their respective countries,
a mutually beneficial barter system emerges.
So I went to meet with the men who rob South Africa's oceans
of their most aphrodisiacal treat.
Welcome.
Hey.
How you doing, my friend?
Good, how are you?
I am fine, my friend.
You're just in time, my friend.
That's where you put the abalone?
Yes, this is the one that I put the abalone in.
Oh, wow.
Speed up. Speed up, guys.
There we go.
Are we all set?
Okay.
♪♪
Hamilton: With widespread poverty
and few opportunities for employment,
many citizens of Haut Bay can't resist the urge
to plunder a precious shellfish
that grows right on their doorstep.
Do you have any friends that have died poaching abalone?
How do people die poaching abalone?
What's the most amazing thing you've seen underwater?
Mermaids?
How many times have you been to prison for abalone?
Seven times?
It's very dark.
[ Birds screeching ]
He's about to get in the water.
He's hoping that he'll find some abalone.
We'll see what happens.
♪♪
Hamilton: Above the water stood the lookout man.
Below, two divers on a quest for the diamonds of the sea.
♪♪
Haliotis midae is a slow-growing creature
that requires a decade to reach harvest size
and almost as long to achieve sexual maturity.
In the wild, it lives 30 years or longer
if it isn't discovered by predators.
♪♪
The night was a success.
[ Indistinct conversation ]
Okay.
The poachers were able to collect dozens of mature abalone
and returned home to celebrate.
♪♪
Hamilton: Do you ever trade the abalone directly for the Mandrax?
Yes, with a Chinese guy.
Wow.
[ Inhaling deeply ]
Feeling relaxed?
Yes.
♪♪
[ Inhales ]
Hamilton: A combination of branding and tradition
have ensured that Mandrax is always sold in tablet form,
despite the fact that it's far from ideal for smoking.
Whoa!
[ Laughter ]
Hamilton: I've seen people collapse after smoking
five or six consecutive hits,
but that was only one hit.
It seems like some really strong stuff.
Yeah.
You okay?
Yeah, I'm...
You okay?
Where did you get cut?
Where did you hit yourself?
[ Singing ]
Hamilton: Less than three minutes ago,
he was borderline unconscious, bleeding on the ground.
Now he's singing and dancing and seems completely fine.
I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.
♪♪
I'm really curious what's in these tablets
or how strong they are.
One goal is certainly to enter a clandestine methaqualone lab.
I've always wanted to see how these cooks create methaqualone.
Hamilton: Today is the day
that Nelson Mandela was released from prison.
There are rumors that Wouter Basson had attempted
to poison him with a substance that would give him cancer
so that even after he was released,
he would be unable to
cause the downfall of the apartheid government.
So I imagine that Wouter Basson is not actually
celebrating this day that resulted in
the Truth and Reconciliation Commission,
which brought to light all of the terrible crimes
and all of the unethical medical
and scientific research he was conducting,
and I can imagine him being annoyed
that I called him on this national holiday.
Woman: The subscriber you have dialed is not available at present.
Please try again later.
The subscriber you have dialed is not available at present.
Please try again later.
The subscriber you have dialed is not available at present.
Please try again later.
[ Beep ]
All right.
I'm glad I thought anxiously about that
for an hour before doing it.
♪♪
Because Wouter Basson isn't returning my phone calls
or e-mails, I'm unable to find the answers
I need for my investigation.
What happened to the two metric tons of methaqualone
that were manufactured for supposed crowd control?
I headed to the South African History Archive
to see what information I could dig
from the remaining documents that have evaded destruction.
I think we're going to want a lot of these digitized, as well.
The trial of Wouter Basson was one of the most expensive trials
in the history of South Africa.
There are thousands of pages of documents
dedicated to investigating his crimes.
Even though it's in Afrikaans, I can still make out
the names of so many poisons in this writing.
Thallium in bottles, VX, sarin,
capsules of sodium cyanide,
botulism in a beer can.
One baboon fetus.
There's evidence that a lot of methaqualone was manufactured.
There's a lot of evidence that would suggest
that it wasn't being used as a conventional chemical weapon
or a crowd control device, so I'm hoping to meet with
an analytical chemist named Etienne Van Zyl
who is responsible for analyzing the methaqualone
that was produced under Project Coast.
♪♪
Hello.
Hi, Hamilton.
Pleased to meet you again.
Good to meet you.
Van Zyl:
You can either view Basson as a soldier that fought
on a government instruction,
that he did utmost
to fulfill his mission.
His mission was to set up a chemical and biological program.
But maybe there was excesses.
Maybe he did things for personal gain.
Again, it's -- it's not -- I cannot confirm that.
I've tested chemicals that was seized
following the dismantling
of Project Coast.
As a young
forensic scientist in 1997,
I was called in
to test these substances.
♪♪
I saw a lot of brown cardboard drums
containing
industrial-scale chemicals,
lots of it.
So I sampled the materials, and I found out that the --
yes, these materials that were present at a front lab
of the old government of South Africa
could be used to make methaqualone.
There were sufficient chemicals
to make at least
3.5 million tablets,
and the methaqualone was one of the substances
that was manufactured with the intention of crowd control.
Now, if you think about it,
how can you control an unruly crowd with the methaqualone?
You cannot fly over them
and disseminate
the methaqualone over the crowd.
But possibly you can start by
getting the crowd...
hooked on methaqualone.
And if they are hooked on methaqualone,
that very same crowd
will become a more docile crowd.
And on top of that,
Project Coast wasn't manufacturing methaqualone
in a capacity that seems ideal for use
in the conventional crowd-control sense.
They were pressing it into tablets.
I cannot --
I cannot confirm on that.
I don't know if they made it
into tablets or not.
If it's manufactured into tablets,
then it's manufactured for abuse at street level.
Wouter Basson claims to have developed a process
for producing weaponized methaqualone tablets
that he would load into grenades and mortars,
yet the idea of a grenade carrying a payload of tablets
has left most scholars of Project Coast confused,
unless the weaponized tablets
were intended for human consumption.
♪♪
Chandre Gould is a leading authority on Project Coast,
and her book "Secrets and Lies" is the definitive text
on the crimes and subsequent trial of Wouter Basson.
There is a very strong suggestion that
the Mandrax was put into tablet form.
Now, obviously,
putting it into tablet form
isn't consistent with using it for crowd-control reasons.
It's very difficult to know either whether those tablets
made their way into the black market at all,
whether they made
their way into the black market
in South Africa or elsewhere,
so there's no clear indication of what happened to the Mandrax.
One of the characteristics
of the chemical and biological
weapons program
is, in fact, the amount of freedom that Dr. Basson had
to decide what was done and how it was done.
Plausible deniability was built into
every aspect of this program.
And I think that is one of the things that's made it
so difficult to unravel the truth.
Basson: It's very simple.
They must just show me what I did wrong.
That's easy.
All they need to do is bring one single case of anybody
that was either damaged and/or hurt in this process,
and I live with it.
But nobody can do that.
I mean, it's been 20 years that this is going on,
and there's not a single scratch and/or blue mark and/or bruise
on anybody that could be proven anyway,
so who did I damage and how?
Hamilton: Basson's methaqualone experiments
are decades in the past, yet Mandrax remains one of
the most widely used synthetic drugs in South Africa.
In order to explain this strange phenomenon,
I had to find the people responsible
for manufacturing it --
the cooks.
Hamilton: On my last visit to South Africa,
I went looking for a Mandrax kingpin.
I started with the street dealers
and then moved up the chain to the street dealers' dealer.
Then played an aggressive game of pool
with the dealers' dealer's dealer,
then lost, then won.
Then lost again.
Then won.
Then finally was introduced to a man who knew not only
how to sell Mandrax, but how to make it.
Was the money.
Yeah.
Did you ever suspect during that period
when you were first learning about Mandrax distribution
that the government
could have been involved?
And assuming these guys
were part of the apartheid government,
if that's what you're suggesting --
That's interesting.
I started talking chemistry with Mr. Basil,
and he invited me to have a look at his operation,
even showing me some of the chemicals and equipment
his cook would use the following day.
Are these guys scary kinds of people,
or is it like a pretty calm business?
It's not calm. Oh, they are. Oh.
Yeah.
I woke up at 6:00 the next morning,
prepared to see the lab I'd been waiting for,
but instead was met with an unforeseen obstacle.
Yeah. So we came here to shoot inside
a clandestine methaqualone lab, and even though
we've scheduled it for a certain time,
they said that the chemist wasn't ready
and instead they wanted us to shoot a music video.
♪ Understand that no man because I am what I am ♪
Hamilton: We've already shot a bedroom scene.
Now we're shooting a scene
where we walk down the street together,
singing the lyrics in unison.
Do you think we could do that later tonight when it's dark,
or did you want to do it now, or what is the, uh...
I was -- I wanted to use the elements of the people --
Oh, okay, I see. Okay, so let's do it now.
Let's do it now.
♪♪
[ Laughter ]
[ Engine revving ]
He wants to incorporate this car skidding theme
into the music video, and it's sort of a condition
for us to do this before we can get into
the methaqualone lab, so...
Oh, man.
All right.
I was closing my jacket
so that if the car bursts into flames,
that I might have some protection.
[ Laughter ]
[ Indistinct conversation ]
[ Engine revs ]
Whoa!
[ Laughs ]
Hold on!
Whoa!
[ Engine revs ]
[ Tires squeal ]
♪♪
[ Bang ]
Our tire just exploded.
It's really fun.
[ Crowd cheering ]
[ Honking horn ]
[ Clapping ]
[ Laughs ]
Like an amazing carnival ride.
I really enjoyed it. I'd like to do it again.
Just when I began to expect the lab was an elaborate ruse
to get a free music video,
I found myself in the back of a truck
with was loaded with one kilogram
of N-acetylanthranilic acid
and a liter of ortho-toluidine,
the same precursors that are illegally imported
and exchanged for abalone.
We're on our way to the Mandrax lab.
The chemist is getting pH strips to monitor the reaction,
and I guess once he has those,
it will be time to start the synthesis.
♪♪
Hamilton: We were secretly taken to an undisclosed location
to finally see the lab.
♪♪
Yeah, maybe, yeah. You don't even --
you -- you don't have to cover your whole face.
You can just do half or something like that.
Man: Yeah?
♪♪
Do you enjoy cooking it?
All right, so show me how you do it.
Yeah.
And are you worried about the fumes?
Should we get away from it now
while it's cooking?
You know that this is toxic,
the ortho-toluidine?
It's not good for you.
There was blood in your --
Yeah.
Blood in your urine?
Yeah.
You know it's -- you know it can cause bladder cancer?
Bladder cancer.
Okay, no.
Though the mechanism of the condensation
is yet to be firmly established,
it seems that inside the pot, as the temperature climbs toward
200 degrees Celsius, the reaction between
the near-equal molar quantities of ortho-toluidine
and N-acetylanthranilic acid begins with a carbonyl addition,
initiated by lone pair electrons on the toluidine amine,
which generates a zwitterionic intermediate
that, after a series of proton transfers
from the ammonium cation and carboxylic acid,
allows oxonium to leave as water.
The water is removed by heat,
driving an otherwise-reversible reaction forward,
and the amodine intermediate undergoes
a concerted cyclization, producing the quinazolinone
after an additional proton transfer
and the loss of a second oxonium as water,
producing methaqualone.
The smell is very strong.
You can smell the ortho-toluidine in the air.
The cook is currently boiling off the water
before he transfers the reaction mix into a tub.
Smells like ortho-toluidine,
which smells like burning rubber,
which smells like cancer.
It's a cancery smell, I'd say.
He's about to prepare methaqualone freebase
with this bucket of aqueous sodium hydroxide.
That's a smell I like.
Makes you itchy?
Yeah.
Hmm.
Do you ever smoke the material yourself?
The cook just added
a concentrated sodium hydroxide solution
to the crude reaction mixture
that's liberating the methaqualone freebase
as well as ortho-toluidine freebase,
and it's boiling and it's a black tar.
What is the step after this?
What comes after this?
To what?
Does this look good?
Are you happy with the way it's going?
♪♪
Something very interesting just happened.
He had the crude reaction mixture
of the hydrochloride salt.
He added aqueous sodium hydroxide.
It was a paste.
There was some difficulty mixing the two,
and almost spontaneously,
the mixture solidified into a powder.
What pH do you want it to be?
Seven.
What is it now?
He's now filtering the neutralized reaction mixture,
which is around pH seven, through a pillowcase.
This is pH seven, right?
Yeah.
Is that a special pillowcase you use?
[ Chuckles ] Yeah, yeah.
Why is that?
Before you were working this job,
did you have other jobs?
No.
[ Chuckles ]
So you went from stealing cars to...
Yeah.
...organic synthesis.
This is about 800 grams of methaqualone freebase.
You filter the freebase through a pillowcase.
Because it's insoluble in water,
it remained in the pillowcase
while all of the other reactants --
I hope -- washed through the filter.
800 grams is 4,000 doses.
It's ready to be pressed into tablets after it's dried.
♪♪
As sodium N-acetyl anthranilate wash down the drain
and up the great sewage ducts of Soweto into the Indian Ocean
and across the gills of what abalone remain
in the coastal waters of South Africa,
I felt a sense of gratitude for everything I'd learned
and a new-found appreciation for the mysteries that remain.
Wouter Basson continues to practice medicine with impunity
and has started a new career as a motivational speaker.
The ruthlessness of it all has never fully been exposed.
♪♪