Pubdate: Wed, 04 May 2005 Source: Monitor, The (McAllen, TX) Copyright: 2005 The Monitor Contact: http://www.themonitor.com Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1250 PARTIAL SOLUTION - COLD DRUG CRACKDOWN WON'T STOP METH California Sen. Dianne Feinstein said in a Washington Post article Saturday that the "fight against methamphetamines received a major boost recently when four of the United States' largest food and drug retailers decided to put certain cold medicines behind the pharmacy counter." She wants federal legislation to accomplish something similar. Limiting consumer access to cold medicines that contain the ingredient pseudoephedrine will create inconvenience for consumers and could create concerns about privacy. But to imagine that it will do much to limit the availability of methamphetamines is the stuff of fantasy. To be sure, pseudoephedrine is an ingredient used to make methamphetamines, which are now illegal -- although they were available and widely used in diet pills in the 1950s. Some people who use methamphetamine and a few small-scale outlaw meth labs have bought large quantities of cold medication to get pseudoephedrine. But it is perhaps the least efficient -- and least widely used -- way to make the drug. As Kerri Houston, vice president of policy for Frontiers of Freedom, the think tank founded by former Wyoming Republican Sen. Malcolm Wallop, pointed out, "placing over-the-counter cold remedies behind the counter is at best a 20 percent solution to an 80 percent problem." That is, about 80 percent of the methamphetamine in the U.S. black market is made by "superlabs," mostly in Mexico and a few in Canada, and imported into this country. Creating added inconvenience for people with colds, therefore, will not stop methamphetamine use or do much to limit supply. It is more likely to solidify the control of large-scale, effective, ruthless criminal gangs and extend their reach into rural areas. But, then, most drug-war policies, however well-intended, make the problems they are supposedly addressing worse. - --- MAP posted-by: SHeath(DPFFLorida)