Daniels signs bill designed to curb methamphetamine

I'm not sure what you are asking. If you are asking if most of the meth in this country is produced using pseudoephedrine bought or stolen in small quantities from stores, the answer is most definitely no. Most of the meth consumed in this country comes from "super labs" in Mexico and western states. These labs also use psuedoehedrine tablets but they have illicit sources that allow them to buy in bulk. There is also another method for producing meth that does not require pseudoephedrine called the P2P method. Most of the big labs used to use this method but now it is rarely ever used because there are tight international controls on the chemicals necessary for it.

These big labs though are only a tiny fraction of the labs operating out there. Oklahoma for instance was busting I think an average of 109 labs per month before they passed there new laws and none of them were "super labs." Most of the labs we see where I live are little set ups where they are only producing a few grams at a time, enough for the cook and the people helping him with maybe a little left over to sell. There are almost always several people involved. Some are gathering pseudoephedrine and other supplies. Some are providing locations like a trailer home in the woods. Some are helping cook it by doing things like scraping red phosphorous off of matchbook strike pads. All get free or super cheap meth in return.

While all these little labs are producing maybe fifteen percent of the meth on the streets in this country, they still present huge problems. They leave toxic waste that has to be cleaned up at great cost. Small children are often present and they often end up with health problems the rest of us have to pay for. A lot of people go to prison, and we end up having to provide for their every need while they are there and pay to have their children cared for while they are gone. Investigating and prosecuting these cases is very expensive and most of the time these people are indigent so we pay to defend them as well.

Aside from all of these considerable expenses, I personally think that these labs are creating a lot of addicts. Look, people are going to do drugs. Some small percentage are going to mess with drugs like methamphetamine. Most will do it once or a few times and then grow out of that phase in their lives without ever becoming addicted. Meth is cheaper than cocaine, but it is still expensive. Most people can't afford to do it a whole lot, and that's a good thing because it's a highly addictive drug and the more someone does it the greater the chance he'll become addicted. These meth labs though take the expense hurdle to addiction out of the equation. For a little effort and maybe a few bucks for generic pills, people helping meth cooks can keep a constant supply of meth. I have no doubt in my mind that this is helping create new meth addicts. It's unbelievable how many of the addicts I represent have been or are involved with cooking the stuff. Most of them couldn't really afford it otherwise.

Well nobody else has a plan, and this is the quickest way to solve the problem. Its called leadership. A man needs to stand up lay down the law and give nary a few reasons why. Meth is the most dangerous drug out there, and it needs to be combatted with over the top measures.

As far as your comment about high school graduates being ill-prepared to handle it, does a college grad these days have anymore sense than the high school grad?

I'm just sick of watching this struggle for mediocrity and people dying because of it.

That's more or less what I was getting at. That being how much of the problem can be traced back to OTC mfg meth.

The question in my mind is, where and how are we going to get the greatest return for our efforts in combating meth. AND with the least government intrusion into the lives of normal people.

No matter what we do, we will always have a certain amount of lost people. My concern is that we will expend a lot of resources for the small return, in order to feel better about ourselves.

I understand your frustration. But your solution to the problem is not practical. People aren't ever going to go for summary executions without trials of meth users and those involved with producing the drug. That would be unconstitutional and some of us would think it morally wrong. It really isn't worth arguing about though because it won't ever happen in this country, thank God.

The high school graduate comment I made was probably not appropriate. What I really meant is that officers are not qualified to be judge, jury, and executioner. It wouldn't matter if they were college educated or not. It still wouldn't be right to give them that kind of power.

The founding fathers knew there was a threshold on which society could govern itself. That threshold was the Constitution, however they also knew that threshold would be crossed by enough people there would be a time that required more dire enforcement of the laws of a civil society, Jefferson even said as much. There is no other option, meth users, pushers, and cookers will eventually need to be eliminated.

"My concern is that we will expend a lot of resources for the small return, in order to feel better about ourselves."

That's what we've been doing with the war on drugs. We spend a fortune. We have all of these great financial and societal costs and nothing really to show for it. That's why I like seeing something as simple as putting the pseudoephedrine behind the counters in pharmacies actually produce great results. This is a program that costs the government very little to implement, in fact they should save a pile of money. The burden on consumers is minimal. The drug companies may see a little lower sales. Pharmacies will probably see improved sales because it will bring pseudoephedrine consumers to them who will often buy other items while in the store. All the other little stores out there selling pseudoephedrine will lose whatever profits they would have made on tablets, but they can still sell gel caps and liquid preparations and non-pseudoehedrine medications. It won't be that big of a deal for them. Shoot they probably lose as much pseudo to shoplifters as they sell as it is.

Oklahoma estimated that they were spending something like $350,000 per meth lab case and they were busting I think about 109 labs per month before they changed their laws. Now I believe they are busting less than twenty labs per month even though they're looking for them as hard as ever. They would have never seen results like those with the drug war as usual. They could have doubled the police force and arrested twice as many people and locked them all up for decades and they wouldn't have seen results that good. It would have cost them a fortune, and they wouldn't have come close to the success they've had.

I don't like big government. I think we have too many laws. I think the war on drugs is stupid, at least the way it's being fought, although I don't want to legalize drugs like meth. Normally I'm against new restrictive laws. But putting the pseudoephedrine behind pharmacy counters is a good idea, and I'm all for it. It won't cure the meth problem, but it will put a huge dent in the problem of all of these little meth labs popping up everywhere. It's worth it to do that.

Be careful what you wish for, Waterleak. When people who think like you get done with us there won't be a country worth defending anymore. Give the government an inch and they'll take a mile. You want to give them a hundred miles. If too many people start thinking like you we'll be worse than the Soviet Union, China, or any of those other countries they taught us to be afraid of as kids as they taught us to cherish our freedom, our fair and free society with the best system of justice in the world.

This country needs a leader who is not afraid to fix problems. It needs a leader who will step on the law breakers, agitators, and pettifoggers. I'm talking about a man who will look at a problem and order an immediate resolution that is shockingly just. Elect a Man like that as President and all our worries will go away. This President would be like any poster here on FR. Know what needs to be done now, and know his own limitations. As a society the Western world has gotten away from that type of thinking. Whats worse is that is how became so successful in the world and we're throwing that away.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure America got to be a great country by allowing cops to execute the folks they thought were guilty. As a matter of fact, I think that might be in the Constitution right after the section where it says 'the President just needs to sign Executive Orders or Treaties and he can do whatever he wants.'

/blistering sarcasm

Inefficiency is part of democracy. The problem is that it should be a significantly smaller part of a contitutional one such as ours. Losing faith in elected government because you fear methheads is silly, though. Benevolent despots are about as frequent as purple polka-dotted alligators, and if you back a strongman because he'll get things done, you'll probably be one of them.

What you are really suggesting is that we destroy what our forefathers built in order to save it. Toss the Constitution out the window. With a supreme leader enforcing all of the laws for us, state governments would be useless. Federalism would be pointless and only get in our supreme leader's way. While we're at it, we don't need Congress making federal laws if we have an all powerful supreme leader who knows what's best for us. They'd probably just get in his way too so we can send them all home. And of course we'd need to throw out the Constitutional right to due process of law before being deprived of life, liberty, or property. Forget about the Constitutional right to confront your accusers in a trial by jury, that just wastes time. In fact, why would we even need a judicial branch at all if police can just execute people on the spot at the behest of our supreme leader? All we would need is our supreme leader with underlings that answer directly to him and a huge federal police force that act as the supreme leader's roving death squads. Everything would be all better then.

The real truth of the matter is that even totalitarian states have drug problems. China still has a drug problem. Iran and even Singapore have worse heroin problems than us. They may be able react quicker and kill a lot of folks, but the drug problems still remain, and in some cases can be worse than what we see in our own country.

Something you have to live with is that a small minority of people in this country are going to use the really hard drugs that are extremely addictive and small percentage of those who try these drugs will end up becoming addicted and most of those will be a problem to the rest of us to varying degrees. This is just a fact of life that we have to deal with. How we deal with them is not an easy question to answer. You would suggest that we kill them all, but realistically that isn't going to happen in this country. Do you have other suggestions? A plan "B" perhaps?