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An interesting look at the link between cold medicine and methamphetamines. I never even thought about this. Worth a look.

Interesting. I can't wait to see if the drug warriors on FreeRepublic weigh in on this.

My county in Washington has been restricting it for a few years..and now the whole state does. It is a real PITA when you are sick to get cold meds (most are behind the pharmacy counter, now). I can't even imagine if they restrict it even more.

Personally, I'm all for putting pseudoephedrine behind pharmacy counters like they do in Oklahoma. It is true that most of the meth on the market comes from big labs in western states and in Mexico, but it would be worth the small burden on consumers to get rid of a substantial portion of these little small batch kitchen meth labs. Oklahoma has seen something like an 80% decline in the number of meth labs busted. That number would probably even be higher if states bordering Oklahoma had similar legislation so that cooks living near the border couldn't just drive across the state line and pick up their pseudoephedrine supply.

These little labs cause big problems. There are the environmental problems caused by all the toxic chemicals. Kids are often in these homes and landlords are often out a good bit of money cleaning up what the state doesn't clean up. Aside from those problems there are all of the law enforcement, criminal justice system, and prison costs associated with these cases. We are spending a fortune in my state busting these people and putting them in prison for years and years before they are eligible for parole. And I think the labs are also a big problem in that they create addicts. I've handled an awful lot of meth lab cases as a public defender and what we generally see in these cases is that there is one guy that knows how to cook, and several others who help him gather supplies, do the grunt work like scraping red phosphorous off of matchbooks and that sort of thing. They do this in exchange for free or dirt cheap meth. Instead of doing an occasional line or buying an occasional $25 bag of meth, they're able to do large quantities of the stuff for extended periods of time. If they weren't addicted before that, they will most likely be after going on a long meth binge or two.

I'm not seeing people making any real money on these little kitchen meth labs. Some might, at least for a batch or two, but most of these people tend to not have a pot to pee in. Most of the dope being cooked up in these little labs is beings smoked, snorted, or shot up by the people cooking it and all the others helping them with the process. And there are an awful lot of little meth labs out there operating. I practice law in a tiny little county and we get several new meth lab cases every month if not every week. It's incredible.

Put the pseudo behind the counters at pharmacies and most of the little small batch labs would disappear practically overnight. The big labs out west and down in Mexico will still get large quantities of pseudo from their illicit sources. But most of these little guys buying or stealing pills all over town and cooking up a few grams at a time won't be able to do it anymore. And the rest of us will have to pick up our pseudoephedrine tablets at the pharmacy when we pick up our other medicine which isn't that big of a deal, especially since liquid preparations and gel caps will still be available at the corner store at least under legislation similar to Oklahoma's.

"The Law Enforcement Alliance of America, a conservative police-based organization, says Congress should give police more resources to go after methamphetamine producers and distributors -- without penalizing people who buy over-the-counter cold medication."

Translation: Don't cut way down on the number of small batch meth labs the easy way. Throw piles and piles of money our way and let us fight this one for you. Sure you might have to spend gozillions of dollars locking up all the people we arrest, but we'll win the war on meth labs just like we're winning the rest of the war on drugs, one doper at a time. It'll be an ongoing problem that won't ever end, but as long as you keep increasing our budgets we'll have just as much success with the war on meth labs as we've been having in the greater war on drugs.