"Blue Sky" (also known as Big Blue or Blue Magic) is the street name which has been coined for the notoriously potent and 99.1% chemically pure crystal methamphetamine manufactured by Walter White and Jesse Pinkman. Since its introduction to the market, there have been a few temporary accomplices who have helped Jesse and Walter cook with the blue meth formula: Brandon "Badger" Mayhew, Gale Boetticher, and Todd Alquist.
The name comes from the distinctive light blue coloration of the meth crystals, a result of the chemical formula Walt devised to get around sales restrictions on pseudoephedrine.
History
Walt and Jesse cooking Blue Sky
Originally distributed solely in Albuquerque by Jesse's street dealers, the drug spread across the Southwest due to the efforts of Gustavo Fring, a major dealer in the region. Purchasing Walt and Jesse's surplus of 38 pounds, Gus used his Los Pollos Hermanos franchise to distribute the meth to the surrounding states of Arizona, Texas and Nevada. Gus became the sole supplier of the product, recruiting Walt and Jesse to produce a quota of at least 200 pounds a week in a superlab underneath an industrial laundromat owned by Fring.
After Fring was murdered; Walt, Jesse, and Mike started a smaller operation to manufacture and distibute Blue Sky using a pest control company as their cover for their mobile lab.
The blue meth has even made its way south of the border into the country of Mexico, attracting the attention of the local drug cartels in the area, particularly, the Juárez Cartel, as described in the song "Negro y Azul: The Ballad of Heisenberg," ("Negro y Azul").
Walt's process uses the reductive amination of phenyl-2-propanone (pehnylacetone or P2P) with methylamine in the presence of aluminum amalgam to yield methamphetamine. Walt obtains his P2P from phenylacetic acid and acetic anhydride. The P2P is created in a tube furnance charged with a thorium oxide catalyst. Methylamine (supplied by Golden Moth Chemical during Walt's time in the superlab) is crucial to his method.
The blue meth produced by Walter is considered to be highly pure and chemically potent. However, in reality, the methamphetamine produced by the P2P method is racemic (both enantiomers are present), and thus consists partly of the less-desired l-methamphetamine isomer. Generally d-methamphetamine is considered preferable to a racemic mixture of d and l-methamphetamine. This is because I-methamphetamine has a very low affinity for dopamine receptors, the receptors that give amphetamines their pleasurable effects, to the point where pure l-methamphetamine is sold over the counter as a decongestant.
It is also possible, however, that Walt devised a method (not shown onscreen) for making the P2P process chirally selective and thus producing nearly 100% d-methamphetamine. This is strongly implied when Walt asks Victor, "And if our reduction is not stereospecific, then how can our product be enantiomerically pure?" ("Box Cutter").
Color
Blue Sky in a box.
The blue color is apparently a plot device, introduced by the show's writers to make Walt's product visually identifiable. Although blue methamphetamine, sometimes called "smurf dope," exists in the real world, 100% pure methamphetamine would appear as colorless/white crystals. However, the slight impurities of Walt's cook could be responsible for the blue color.
Typical meth synthesis
This phenylacetone method was once popular with the outlaw biker gangs in the 1960s and 1970s, but faded away once phenylacetic acid and methylamine became watched as drug precursor chemicals by the DEA. The synthesis of methamphetamine is now typically done through the reduction of ephedrine or pseudoephedrine, using either hydroiodic acid and red phosphorus or lithium metal dissolved in anhydrous ammonia. The reduction of pseudoephedrine produces only d-methamphetamine.
Blue Sky makes a brief cameo appearance in the AMC series The Walking Dead, in the episode titled "Bloodletting". It can briefly be seen in Merle Dixon's drug stash which contains crystal meth among other drugs.
Blue Sky props consist of crystallized sugar and are essentially pieces of blue rock candy.
