For the curious, the plant is the joint pine.

Species name Ephedra fragilis.

It contains the highest concentration of ephedrine of any ephedra species. It’s native to southern Spain, Italy and Portugal.

Ephedrine is also known as beta hydroxy methamphetamine.

It works quite well as a cold medicine. The “beta hydroxy” part stops it crossing the blood brain barrier too much.

So it’s not meth.

But take away one teensy little oxygen molecule (this is non trivial and doing so may cause your house to explode. Also it’s very very very naughty and big men with guns might get upset), and it suddenly gets a whole lot more interesting.