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The truth is that the vast majority of the meth was always coming from "superlabs" out west and in Mexico. Some of the little meth labs were producing ounces in a day but most were producing just a few grams in a day and most of what they were producing was being used by the people cooking it and those helping them out. Really though, getting rid of most of the little meth labs is a good thing for communities. These little labs were supplying a lot of the users who were the biggest problem to communities and were creating a lot of new hardcore addicts. These people cooking it and those helping them were getting free or close to free dope. Instead of having to pay $25 for a quarter gram, what it costs here, they could trade just a a couple of boxes of pseudoephedrine tablets for that. There were always several people involved. Some would be driving from store to store buying up or stealing pseudoephedrine. Others were out getting iodine, red phosphorous, and other supplies. They'd help out by doing things like sitting around scraping the red phosphorous off of matchbook strikepads, a labor intensive process. They'd be messing with this day in and day out cooking batch after batch of dope and doing huge quantities of it. They'd build up tolerances to it and several grams a day in some cases.

Usually, the guy cooking it was already a hardcore addict. The people helping him out were not always hardcore addicts though. They'd be friends or family getting sucked into this, and they'd be doing getting a lot of free dope they would have had to pay good money for but for the fact they were helping cook it. A lot of these people probably never would have done enough to become addicted had they not had a steady supply of free or dirt cheap dope. I think a lot of addicts were being created, and I know that easy access to so much cheap dope was causing a lot of the kinds of problems you only see from meth users who do lots of the stuff for days and days on end without sleeping. That's when they really go crazy. Sleep deprivation coupled with tweaking so hard they are climbing the walls makes these people lose their minds.

Our laws putting the pseudoephedrine behind pharmacy counters came into effect a few months ago. Things have changed dramatically around here. We used to get several new meth lab cases or possession of paraphernalia with intent to manufacture meth cases every month at the public defender office where I work. Now we hardly ever get any and the cases we do get are even more rinky-dink than the ones before where these guys are cooking even smaller batches and they aren't able to keep it going all the time because they are so limited in the amount of pseudoephedrine they used to get. Also, the number of crazy incidents involving meth users is dropping off. We used to get cases all the time where these guys had been acting out just crazy paranoid tweaker behavior. People would be chasing each other around with guns when they decided their buddy they'd been doing dope with for days on end without sleeping had all the sudden turned into a cop. We'd get cases where people would run up to a cop car to report that aliens were spawning in their yard killing people or that Salvadorians were chasing them with laser guns, all sorts of crazy crap. What was happening was these people were cooking dope or helping out in the cook and doing so much for so long without sleep that they'd start hallucinating and losing their minds. Now that they have to pay for it we're seeing a lot less of that. That's means less of these guys and less innocent people are getting hurt by all this craziness.

And of course there are a lot of other benefits. We were spending a fortune on these cases with all the investigations and prosecutions, prison sentences, and clean up of toxic waste, not to mention what we were spending on all the collateral damage to children caught up in all this mess. So many kids were becoming wards of the state and many had health and mental problems as result of living in meth lab homes and being around their seriously screwed up parents. There's less of that now. Oklahoma estimated that on an average meth lab bust was costing them well over $300,000 by the time they calculated in all the costs of the investigation, prosecution, prison, clean up costs, family services costs and so on. They were spending something like $10,000,000 a month on meth lab busts and have now reduced the number of meth labs by around 80% with their new laws. There are all sorts of benefits.

I'm not normally for new laws prohibiting things, but I'm really glad we've passed the laws putting the pseudoephedrine tablets pharmacy counters. I know it will be a somewhat of burden to some people with asthma or sinus problems who use the stuff all the time, but not that much of a burden. And it really isn't that big of a deal at all for the rest of us. My family, wife, kids and all, hardly use any pseudoephedrine. Cold medicine for young kids comes in liquid form and it isn't required to be kept behind pharmacy counters in most states. There are still liquid gel caps at just about every store if you need some in a pinch and other over the counter drugs that work just about as well. And we have to go to the pharmacy all the time anyway for medicine so it's no big deal to pick up pseudoephedrine tablets if we need to. And if we didn't need to go to the pharmacy for something else, we could always just pick some up at the WalMart pharmacy while we are their picking up groceries or other household supplies. It's just not that big of a deal. These are laws that cost almost nothing to implement and they actually save states a ton of money and reduce the problems cased by meth in a fairly substantial way. Laws that actually work, wow. Laws that actually save us money, amazing.