Radley Balko excerpts a story that shows anti-meth laws regulating the sale of certain cold remedies have led to people making big bucks trawling chemists, buying up these medications and then reselling them at huge profit to meth producers. Balko snarks:
Meth use was also up 34 percent in 2009. So the new laws are inconveniencing law-abiding people who want to treat cold and allergy symptoms, have had either zero or a positive effect on meth use, have lured new people into the meth trade, and have created a bigger market for smuggling meth and meth ingredients into the country from Mexico.
But perhaps we should go easy on the politicians who passed these laws. I mean, it’s not like anyone could possibly have predicted any of this.
Really, it’s a win-win situation: the professional drug warriors have a new reason to keep their budgets intact or increased, the pharmaceutical industry makes money hand over fist from the artificial scarcity of Sudafed and similar drugs, Big Crime has less amateur competition and some lucky duckies get to travel the country buying cold relief cures to make a quick buck, which will come in handy since if I’m not mistaken, the biggest meth using parts of the US are also the most economically depressed.