How Reformulating Pyrex Made Crack Production More Difficult

From Popular Science:

When World Kitchen took over the Pyrex brand, it started making more products out of prestressed soda-lime glass instead of borosilicate. With pre-stressed, or tempered, glass, the surface is under compression from forces inside the glass. It is stronger than borosilicate glass, but when it’s heated, it still expands as much as ordinary glass does. It doesn’t shatter immediately, because the expansion first acts only to release some of the built-in stress. But only up to a point.
One unfortunate use of Pyrex is cooking crack cocaine, which involves a container of water undergoing a rapid temperature change when the drug is converted from powder form. That process creates more stress than soda-lime glass can withstand, so an entire underground industry was forced to switch from measuring cups purchased at Walmart to test tubes and beakers stolen from labs. Which just goes to show, if you think you know all the consequences of your decisions today, you’re probably wrong.

Did not know that.  It reminds me of the day I woke up in chemistry class, and the professor had written an equation on the overhead projector involving ether, and he was explaining how ether was used to purify cocaine.  He went on to explain that Richard Pryor caught himself on fire because he didn't wait long enough to let the ether evaporate away before he tried to free base.  That is one of the few things I remember from my college classroom experience.

Update: Technically, the reformulation made it easier to crack the Pyrex, at least when making crack cocaine.