Nicholas Sand
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Nick Sand(b. 1942) 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.
Sand, a former Sonoma County resident, 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 federal prison. 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.
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 world-wide 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.
Sand has said about this Wikipedia entry:
- There is a bit of hyperbole and it is very flattering but yes, it's basically true. . . . I was friends with Art Kleps the founder of the neo-American church. I was Chief Alchemist for the league for spiritual discovery and for Castalia foundation also at Millbrook. Otherwise it's a pretty interpretation of what happened and it's way more accurate than others." [1]
