(a) It is an offense for a person to knowingly initiate a process intended to result in the manufacture of any amount of methamphetamine.

Attorney's Note

Under the Tennessee Code, punishments for crimes depend on the classification. In the case of this section:
ClassPrisonFine
class B felony8 to 30 yearsup to $25,000
For details, see Tenn. Code § 40-35-111

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Terms Used In Tennessee Code 39-17-435

  • Controlled substance: means a drug, substance, or immediate precursor in Schedules I through VII of §. See Tennessee Code 39-17-402
  • Immediate methamphetamine precursor: means ephedrine, pseudoephedrine or phenylpropanolamine, or their salts, isomers or salts of isomers, or any drug or other product that contains a detectable quantity of ephedrine, pseudoephedrine or phenylpropanolamine, or their salts, isomers or salts of isomers. See Tennessee Code 39-17-402
  • Law enforcement officer: includes a sheriff, sheriff's deputy, and, only for purposes of the enhancement of a crime, a deputy jailer. See Tennessee Code 39-11-106
  • Manufacture: means the production, preparation, propagation, compounding, conversion or processing of a controlled substance, either directly or indirectly by extraction from substances of natural origin, or independently by means of chemical synthesis, and includes any packaging or repackaging of the substance or labeling or relabeling of its container, except that "manufacture" does not include the preparation or compounding of a controlled substance by an individual for the individual's own use or the preparation, compounding, packaging, or labeling of a controlled substance by:
    (A) A practitioner as an incident to administering or dispensing a controlled substance in the course of professional practice. See Tennessee Code 39-17-402
  • Person: means an individual, corporation, governmental subdivision or agency, business trust, estate, trust, partnership or association or any other legal entity. See Tennessee Code 39-17-402
  • Testimony: Evidence presented orally by witnesses during trials or before grand juries.
(b) It shall not be a defense to a violation of this section that the chemical reaction is not complete, that no methamphetamine was actually created, or that the process would not actually create methamphetamine if completed.
(c) For purposes of this section, “initiates” means to begin the extraction of an immediate methamphetamine precursor from a commercial product, to begin the active modification of a commercial product for use in methamphetamine creation, or to heat or combine any substance or substances that can be used in methamphetamine creation.
(d) Expert testimony of a qualified law enforcement officer shall be admissible for the proposition that a particular process can be used to manufacture methamphetamine. For purposes of this testimony, a rebuttable presumption is created that any commercially sold product contains or contained the product that it is represented to contain on its packaging or labels.
(e) A person may not be prosecuted for a violation of this section and of manufacturing a controlled substance in violation of § 39-17-417 based upon the same set of facts.
(f) A violation of this section is a Class B felony.