I don't understand why no one synthesizes Oxycodone (or Oxymorhpone, Hydrocodone, Hydromorphone, etc) HCl. Pharma pills are very expensive, so this should be quite profitable. It would also be great to have some Oxycodone HCL instead of pills. Could be dosed far more accurately (not just 5, 10, 20... mg) aswell. Can anyone explain this to me?
I'm not 100% on this, but from what I've seen when people ask similar questions it's that it's just far more difficult than it's worth to synthesize those drugs. Assuming you're starting from an opium poppy plant you have a couple of alkaloids in it. The most important and commonly used one is morphine which is how people make heroin and whatnot. That's easier, extract it, add a chemical I can't remember the name of, bake it up, and bam you got some H. However, going from poppies to the pharma pills is a fundamentally different process. Firstly, you have to start somewhere other than morphine. In modern pharmaceutical production they use thebaine as a precursor which is relatively difficult to obtain. It's found in poppy straw, 99% of which is grown in Australia, Spain, and France. Even if somebody were to grow the necessary poppy, the process for making that into Oxy or Hydro is a very difficult process and the precursor is already illegal in the US through the Analog Act. The production cost:profit ratio doesn't work out very well in that sense without a lot of startup costs by way of capital, that is, the machines and tools needed for this synthesis. An easier way in terms of accessibility, ease of production, and costs of production would be to make it from Codeine tabs but even that is very intensive. Ultimately, the biggest reason nobody does is that the market isn't big enough for anybody to warrant getting into it. Even if it were a bigger market, it's expected that the pills would have to be cheaper, somebody would pretty quickly figure out the pills aren't real, they aren't pharma official. The demand for pressed pills or counterfeit pills demands a lower price point.
From a business perspective if the vendor isn't up front about them being pressed like the bar vendors are they'll lose all credibility once somebody figures it out. If they are up front though they'll have to offer a reason for them to be purchased over the real deal. The easiest way to do that is lower prices which means lower margins which makes it less profitable and less desirable as something to do.