Replies

All this will do is make the meth lab chemists do is find another source for chems needed.

Yeah. Somehow I don't think this will put the hurt on the meth trade.

The rules are aimed at home-grown labs. Most of the meth in this country comes from professional Mexican drug rings. Its an addiction more potent than cocaine or heroin. Users live just for the highs.

"All this will do is make the meth lab chemists do is find another source for chems needed."

The "chemists" with the giant labs producing the majority of the meth available o the street don't go around to stores buying or stealing a couple of boxes of pills here and there. They have other sources for large quantities. What they've done in Oklahoma by restricting psuedoephedrine sales such that people can only buy it from pharmacies from behind the drug counter after they sign for it is put a serious dent in all of the little kitchen meth labs. These guys doing this for the most part are certainly not what you would think of as "chemists." They're a bunch of toothless drug addicts. I'm a public defender in an area where meth is big and I represent these guys all the time. It's obvious that this stuff is not hard to make at all because the people caught cooking it aren't generally the rocket scientist types by any stretch of the imagination.

I'm all for restricting psuedoephedrine such that it is only sold from behind pharmacy counters to people who will sign for it. At a minimum, it would cut way down on the number of people going to prison for a long time for cooking dope or possessing paraphernalia with intent to manufacture. Far fewer would be able to get enough psuedoephedrine to cook up their own batches. It would probably cut down on addiction too because for all of these thousands of little meth labs in my state and yours there are almost always several little helpers out gathering supplies who get all of the free dope they can use in return for their help. Without the little labs everywhere, a lot of these people would never be able to afford enough dope to become addicted. Overall, this would save my state and probably yours a lot of money now spent prosecuting and locking up so many people, and if it does help reduce the number of addicts it will relieve us from some of the crime and other problems meth addicts cause.

And the inconvenience to legitimate consumers would be minimal. Most of us already have to go to the drug store anyway sometimes to buy medicine for ourselves or someone in our families, and most of us don't end up needing psuedoephedrine that often. It wouldn't be that much of a problem to have to pick up your psuedoephedrine at the drug store.