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Home Front: Politix
Despite draconion cold medicine laws, Meth productions soars
2011-01-10
At the height of the methamphetamine epidemic, several states turned to a new weapon to disrupt the drug trade: electronic systems that could track sales of the cold medicine used to make meth.

But an Associated Press analysis of federal data reveals that the practice has not only failed to curb the meth trade, which is growing again after a brief decline. It also created a vast and highly lucrative market for profiteers to buy over-the-counter pills and sell them to meth producers at a huge markup.
APee so rest at link. Honestly, did anyone NOT see this problem coming? Besides dumb-ass politicians I mean.
A black market for cold remedies, you say. Darned good thing the druggies don't need aspirin, tylenol or motrin to make meth, one can only imagine...
Posted by:DarthVader

#11  I came down with a cold last week. I went to the pharmacy to buy cough medicine. Nothing more, just COUGH medicine. They demanded my drivers license to complete the transaction. MY DRIVERS LICENSE TO COMPLETE THE F'ING TRANSACTION FOR COUGH MEDICINE! It wasn't a major incovenience, but I thought "What the 'F'"? This is in a nice area of Dallas. One of the nicest. They are doing nothing to stop meth production. They are making me thing twice about buying cold medicine when I'm sick, for fear of being put on some kind of drug "list". If only I could live somewhere civilized, like Communist Viet Nam, where anyone can by Valium or pharmaceutical amphetamines over-the-counter!!!!
Posted by: Scooter McGruder   2011-01-10 23:01  

#10  #8 That brings back memories. "place smelled like cat pee". When we went to a cat pee house in the summer you could smell the ammonia several feet before you got to the door. It then made your eyes water and choked you up when inside. It didn't seem to bother the people living there.
Posted by: Dale   2011-01-10 21:18  

#9  If that was the plan, it was stupid. Then again I'm near distribution routes and hubs. Over the last 5 years those hubs have gone to crap, there are turf wars which look like race wars but are really meth wars, consumption is up, original haunts of factories are still up to reputation and if a group can get the ingredients, as they can in the black market, it is still cheaper than buying the import.

Barbara, our last round of training didn't have that good ol' hypothetical classroom feeling to it...and I like the thinking, perhaps some MLRS training or a good ol FAB, just to be sure there is little decon. But I tend to look at it as foreign nationals in an effort to establish anti-law in the USA; a military matter.
Posted by: swksvolFF   2011-01-10 21:14  

#8  "Now American first responders, police, firemen, EMTs, are less likely than they would have been to encounter a toxic half-baked chemical stew along with a half-baked criminal druggie."

Rammer, a fire/rescue class I went to a number of years ago taught us that if we entered a home (even by invitation of the resident) and the place smelled like cat pee (as though there were far too many cats living there) and we saw no cats or evidence of cats, get the hell out of that meth lab!

Never had to test it, thank goodness.


"They have superlabs in Mexico where it is producing huge amounts of the stuff"

If we had a CIA that was worth a sh*t, chris, there'd be some "accidents" at those labs and the lot would be blown to smithereens.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut   2011-01-10 20:38  

#7  Not a problem, actually a feature.

The point of these 'Draconian" laws was not to stop the use or trade in meth. Their purpose was to make it easier for a drug-addled-freak to buy the stuff than to make it themselves.

This has worked well. Now American first responders, police, firemen, EMTs, are less likely than they would have been to encounter a toxic half-baked chemical stew along with a half-baked criminal druggie.

Centralizing the production end of the business in the hands of large volume organized criminals, as the article suggests, was exactly the point.

Posted by: rammer   2011-01-10 19:52  

#6  GU Hello; Thanks for sharing your quote. You have seen it to. I talk to prison guards off and on and I mention this of them (I call them Zombies). They say a few when in prison do try to change. With this economy recidivism must be near 80%.
Posted by: Dale   2011-01-10 19:05  

#5  not just some of the meth is coming from mexico, but most of it now. Look at how much of the chemmicals needed too make the stuff is being bouhgt through China and elsewhere in asia. They have superlabs in Mexico where it is producing huge amounts of the stuff where as in the US they make small quantities.Also why do you think the cartels from mexico are the ones in such places are being caught with not smal amounts but millions of dollars worth of this scurge.
Posted by: chris   2011-01-10 18:30  

#4  Agree, Dale. Teeth may rot and they age by decades but the "sex is soooo good" that "at least I'll die with a smile on my face".
Posted by: Gerthudion Unump7993   2011-01-10 17:45  

#3  Pseudophedrine is manufactured by a limited number of labs, many overseas ie. China, and is purchased in bulk by the cartels, shipped to and manufactured in Mexico. North Korea is also known to peddle meth. The focus of the drug war in ineffective because they seem to target the users that make it for personal use and pocket change rather than going for the source and microdot the ingredients for tracking purposes. Same goes for explosive materiels.
Posted by: Gerthudion Unump7993   2011-01-10 17:32  

#2  They just use something else. It doesn't matter to them if they live or die. They live only for the high. I know of young person who cannot even say his name. One is in extended care because he destroyed his kidneys. Anything they can huff, inject or ingest will be tried. "you know that stuff will kill you, yea man but the high is the best".
Posted by: Dale   2011-01-10 17:26  

#1  Some of this meth is coming in from Mexico. Another good reason to control the border.
Posted by: JohnQC   2011-01-10 16:41  

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