Amphetamine Purity Assumption in Drug Offense Sentencing

The court addressed whether, in the absence of a precisely determined purity level for amphetamine, a default purity assumption, similar to the one used for cocaine, could be applied to qualify the offense as a serious case under the relevant statute. The court ruled that, unlike cocaine and heroin, there are no established average purity values that can be assumed for amphetamine when the actual purity cannot be reliably determined through interrogation or analysis, thus precluding the analogical application of cocaine's 33 1/3% purity standard, requiring the specific purity of the traded substance to be established.