Contributed by: filbert Sunday, August 14 2005 @ 07:16 AM CST
Moreover, it’s not clear that less onerous approaches aren’t just as effective. In April of last year, Oklahoma became the first of more than a dozen states to require that medicines containing pseudoephedrine be kept behind pharmacy counters. The result has been a 90% drop in seizures of meth-production labs. Congress is considering legislation that would apply the Oklahoma law nationwide. State narcotics officials report similar results in Iowa, which earlier this year passed a law that allows only licensed pharmacists to sell pseudoephedrine products and limits customers to one package per day.
Oregon relocated its cold medicines behind the counter last October, and Governor Kulongoski credits the move with drastically reducing the number of meth labs in the state. Ten months later, he’s ready to further burden Oregonians without any evidence that prescription requirements will help close more meth labs.
Making pseudoephedrine prescription-only is just nuts. Jaw-droppingly nuts. It’s Sudafed, for heaven’s sake. Yeah, meth is a problem, but really, this War on Sudafed is getting out of hand.