Drug war prohibition leads to explosion (literally) in meth making

[Knightskye]

The new formula does away with the clutter of typical meth labs, and it can turn the back seat of a car or a bathroom stall into a makeshift drug factory. Some addicts have even made the drug while driving.

The pills are crushed, combined with some common household chemicals and then shaken in the soda bottle. No flame is required....

"It simplified the process so much that everybody's making their own dope," said Kevin Williams, sheriff of Marion County, Ala.

http://www.reason.com/blog/show/135648.html

For a while, at the store I worked at, we had limits on how much of a certain cold medicine our customers could buy.

Apparently they don't need too much to make meth.

Just imagine, we can drive on the road without worrying about someone's car blowing up in a meth-making explosion.

[dannno]

Great article..

Here's a good comment from below:


This is just awesome. For any thinking person, the best book about meth bar none is "No Speed Limit: The Highs and Lows of Meth" by Frank Owen.

The chronology of prohibition-driven unintended consequences revealed in the book about this drug is tragically comical.

Back in the day, biker gangs made it using a precursor chemical called "P2P" in relatively sophisticated labs. The DEA "cracked down" on P2P and saw meth use decline, for six months. By the end of the first year, some chemist had figured out you could cook the stuff much easier, and make a much better drug, using ephedrine.

After a few years of this, ephedrine essentially gets banned with another Federal law. So, the cooks hit on pseudoephedrine (Dayquil, Sudafed) and its a meth-party again. The DEA responds with bulk pseudoephedrine controls, so mass-purchases of OTC cold medications ensues. The DEA cracks down on that, then the Mexican cartels take over. The Mexicans crack down on pseudoephedrine imports themselves, and of all of a sudden imports of the chemical into places like Argentina triples. Endless stupid game.

So now people have figured out how to get the most meth possible, as easy as possible, from as little precursor chemical as possible. Oh, and you can pseudoephedrine in a process not that different than homebrewing beer it turns out anyways.

Over the past thirty years, the DEA's attempts at controlling methamphetamine via precursor chemicals have spurred market-drive innovation in chemistry that have turned meth from a niche drug for biker outlaws into a mass-producible chemical that is now a multi-billion dollar business for Mexican cartels. Adjusted for inflation, meth has never been cheaper or "better" or more available.

I've got an idea to help Americans afford prescription drugs: Ban them all. Let the black market take over and like every other illegal drug, they will become cheaper and more available to the nation's uninsured poor. Seems to be a pattern here...

[Knightskye]

Great article..

Here's a good comment from below:

Hahahaha.

Thank you for sharing that.

[Objectivist]

http://www.reason.com/blog/show/135648.html

For a while, at the store I worked at, we had limits on how much of a certain cold medicine our customers could buy.

Apparently they don't need too much to make meth.

Just imagine, we can drive on the road without worrying about someone's car blowing up in a meth-making explosion.

There are things at the hay and feed store that you can make meth out of. Each 4 pounds of the product contains enough ephedra to make 1 pound of meth.

We already had cars blowing up on the road.... they were call Ford Pinto's

[Knightskye]

We already had cars blowing up on the road.... they were call Ford Pinto's

:p