- Nicholas Sand
-
Nick Sand (born 1941) is a low-profile hero in the psychedelic community for his work as a clandestine chemist from 1966-1996. Sand was also Chief Alchemist for the League for Spiritual Discovery at the Millbrook estate in New York.
History
Sand grew up in Brooklyn, New York and by his late teens he was already aware of the LSD scene developing around Greenwich Village. While attending Brooklyn College, Sand became interested in the teachings of Gurdjieff, the study of different cultures, and various Eastern philosophers. Graduating in 1966 with a degree in Anthropology and Sociology, Sand followed Leary and Alpert to Millbrook and became a guide to the psychedelic realm. In this role he initiated many people who came to Millbrook in a relaxed and sacred set and setting. He also began extracting DMT.
Sand started a company with his friend disguised as a perfume company - the real intent of the company was to manufacture Mescaline and DMT. Sand was starting to attract the attention of police because of his lengthy visits to Milbrook and when Owsley visited Milbrook in April 1967 Sand was inspired to head to San Francisco.
Sand's San Francisco Lab was operational by July 1967. Sand wanted to make LSD but was lacking the necessary precursors. Owsley had given him a formula for STP and would tablet Sand's product from his own lab in Orinda.
In December 1968 Sand purchased a farmhouse in Windsor, California, at that time a small town in rural Sonoma County. There he and Tim Scully, another psychedelic chemist, set up a large LSD lab. Scully and Sand produced over 3.6 million tablets of LSD, which was distributed under the name "Orange Sunshine".
Sand was prosecuted for LSD manufacture following a lengthy investigation by federal narcotics agents in the early 1970s. He was found guilty and sentenced, in 1976, to 15 years in a federal penitentiary.
Sand's attorney appealed his conviction and Sand was released on $50,000 bail. While out of custody he went underground in 1976 and remained a fugitive from federal agents for two decades.
Resurfacing
In September 1996, Sand surfaced as a drug suspect in Vancouver, British Columbia. According to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, he was living under the name David Roy Shepard, and his true identity was not discovered until his fingerprints were sent to the FBI lab in Washington, D.C., nearly two months after his arrest. The RCMP says Sand was one of seven people who were operating one of the largest LSD labs in North American history, a facility near Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, that produced enough acid to dose every man, woman and child in Canada 1.5 times.
Sand served prison time in Canada and the United States from 1996 to 2000 for the manufacture of psychedelic drugs including, but not limited to, MDMA, MDA, DMT, LSD, and mescaline. He also produced an analog of LSD known as lysergic acid sec-butylamide. Sand was sentenced to nine years in Canada but was returned to the United States as he was still living underground due to charges of LSD production from the early 70's. Nicholas Sand is credited with the largest poly-drug clandestine laboratory to be encountered in Canada. His laboratory was secreted in an industrial complex in a suburb of Vancouver, British Columbia. His lab was of a level of sophistication never encountered before by police investigators or clandestine lab specialists from Health Canada. Sand worked diligently in his lab several months each summer and resided in Mexico for the rest of the year. For 1995, he estimated a net income of 1.8 million dollars for three months of work. The substances produced in his lab were destined for a worldwide market, and also included MDP-2-P or piperonyl methyl ketone (an MDMA precursor), which was quite rare in Canada at the time.
As of 2001, Sand is on a monitored release program and resides in San Francisco, California. He is writing a book and practicing Buddhism.
External links
Categories:- Living people
- 1942 births
- Psychedelic researchers
- LSD
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
