Some law enforcement groups want Indiana to go further than it does in restricting sales of products with ingredients used by meth cookers. Cold and allergy medicines containing pseudoephedrine are now required to be behind the counter, and there are restrictions on how and to whom it can be sold. What is proposed is that we make such products prescription only, and a proponent makes use of a good analogy:
“The problem for law enforcement in Indiana is that instead of giving us mousetraps to catch the mice, our legislators have given us cheese and told us to chase the mice around with it,” said Gary Ashenfelter, a spokesman for the Indiana Drug Enforcement Association. “You've got to wonder, what the hell are we doing?"
The number of meth labs seized seemed to hit a peak of 1,074 in 2004 and started declining under the effects of the new law. But meth cookers obviously found a way around it -- there were 1,343 seizures last year. It's the same story in many other states.
Not Oregon, though. A prescription-only law went into effect there, and the number of labs seized fell from 472 in 2004, a year before the law passed, to 10 in 2009. maybe that's significant, maybe not. What if the drop is temporary, the way it was here after our behind-the-counter law was passed. Mississippi just went that way, too, and it will be interesting to see what happens to the meth lab numbers there.
The pharmaceutical companies and their retail outlets will fight this like crazy. They seem to favor a different tactic being tried by some states (Kentucky is one) involving electronic tracking of sales on a statewide basis.
With all due respect to the Indiana Drug Enforcement guy, dealing with crime is always like "chasing the mouse (or rate, really) around with the cheese." The bad guys will always find a way to do what they're gonna do. The more law-abiding people are inconvenieced or even harmed by the efforts to prevent harm (think ai
