The retail pharmacy CVS announced today, over concerns about the manufacture by juveniles of crystal methamphetamine, that the store will now require ID for purchase of acetone-containing nail polish remover. Add this to the cold medicines being kept behind the counter and a store manager or pharmacist looking at you like a criminal when you request some pseudo-ephedrine for the sniffles, and you've got a major inconvenience for ordinary consumers.
The idiotic and wholly political "war on drugs" has been and continues to be an abject failure regardless of how you measure it.
In Oklahoma where meth-use is increasing dramatically -- and why not? what else is there to do in Oklahoma besides get high and dream of somewhere else? -- they passed the first cold medicine restriction laws and love to point out that "meth lab seizures" by law enforcement have increases by 80%. But what a weird standard by which to measure success? Meth lab seizures? They could have seized that many meth labs without limiting the access of Oklahomans to cold medicine.
The truth is that most of the meth in this country comes from two super-labs, one in California and one in Mexico where they import truckloads of ephedrine and pseudo-ephedrine directly, not distilled from cold medicine. And every legitimate research lab in the country has a bottle of acetone. Limiting access to cold medicine and acetone just inconveniences consumers and forces drug users to buy meth from pushers.
40 years and over $1,000,000,000,000 (1 trillion) and the American appetite for drugs hasn't measurably abated one iota. What politician has the guts to say enough is enough?
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