Christian Schneider at Atomic Trousers wrote last week about a law which I have taken to task several times on this blog.  Although he doesn't reference anything I wrote specifically, I feel the need to respond to his comments, since they are (as usual for him) well thought out, and almost convincing.  I'm talking about the rather ridiculous law which requires that certain over the counter drugs that contain pseudoephedrine be placed behind the counter, and require you to show ID, and sign a log book in order to buy.

First, a distinction has to be made between the issue of meth labs and the issue of meth use. The law was intended to keep meth cooks from being able to purchase large amounts of pseudoephedrine to set up toxic meth labs in their homes. These are the poisonous labs where children often live, and police have to raid wearing Haz-Mat suits. Of course, the bill isn't going to eliminate demand for meth - nobody ever said it would. To argue that the bill is ineffective because meth is coming in from Mexico is a red herring.
...
Furthermore, as the bill was being debated, stores were already moving their cold medicine behind the counter voluntarily. Wal-Mart and Target had already done so, without any new state law.

OK.  So as I understand it, there are a few arguments being made here, which I'll try to cover.  The simplest is that the law shouldn't have mattered because companies were voluntarily doing this anyway as the bill was being debated.  That doesn't mean much, since most pharmacies were doing this in order to prevent the law from being passed.  The laws passed require pharmacies to keep log books, record ID's, and be held responsible for selling over certain amounts of the drug to people.  It was smart of them to voluntarily move these drugs behind the counter, in the hopes that would satisfy law makers so they wouldn't have to also start keeping complicated log books, and other things that came with the law which were undesirable to pharmacies.  In essence, they were being blackmailed, and then the states passed the law anyway.

The second argument, that this was never intended to reduce meth use may be valid... but the cheerleading done by many would seem to hide this point.  A lot of people certainly made it seem like meth use would go down... but that's really irrelevant here.  We all know that you can't legislate demand.  And that's key.  But there's a larger issue here.  Sure, home grown meth labs have gone down, but what has replaced them? 

But Mr. Van Haaften, like officials in other states with similar restrictions, is now worried about a new problem: the drop in home-cooked methamphetamine has been met by a new flood of crystal methamphetamine coming largely from Mexico.

Sometimes called ice, crystal methamphetamine is far purer, and therefore even more highly addictive, than powdered home-cooked methamphetamine, a change that health officials say has led to greater risk of overdose. And because crystal methamphetamine costs more, the police say thefts are increasing, as people who once cooked at home now have to buy it.
...
And although child welfare officials say they are removing fewer children from homes where parents are cooking the drug, the number of children being removed from homes where parents are using it has more than made up the difference.

"It's killing us, this Mexican ice," said Mr. Van Haaften, a former sheriff. "I'm not sure we can control it as well as we can the meth labs in your community."

That's right... some officials would rather have the home grown variety than the imported stuff!  Because the same old meth isn't just coming from Mexico as Christian seems to suggest.  Now that there is a strong demand for imported meth, there are smuggling operations that come along with it.  That means a major increase in violent crime that is associated with gangs trying to control the black market:

At the height of what he calls the war against "redneck labs" making meth, Wilson said his jail - capacity 210 - was jammed with 230 inmates, most of them in for meth production and related crimes.

But even though the inmate population is down to 150, Wilson is bracing for the next wave of meth crime, convinced that the Mexican gangs that are plaguing counties to the south are even now reversing Sherman's march on Atlanta during the Civil War.

"What we believe is going to happen is that we've become so strict on the purchase of pseudoephedrine ... that we will see a lot more Mexican meth," he said. "They’ll make it by hundreds of pounds. I know it's coming."

And all the while, more people are using even stronger meth, and the kids who now don't have to live in meth labs are still being taken from parents who are buying instead of cooking it.  Where is the real victory here?  The answer is that there isn't one.  There never is!

The more important question to ask, which nobody seems to want to, is what caused people to start cooking meth in their homes in the first place?  Anyone?  Anyone?  Something-m-e-n-t stupidity... Government stupidity.  Meth wasn't always illegal of course.  It was widely prescribed in the 1950's and 1960's.  It wasn't until 1983 when the first laws were passed prohibiting some of the precursors from being sold.  And golly gee, if that just isn't when meth labs became really prevalent.

So when legally acquired drugs, made under pharmaceutical conditions were more heavily regulated, and eventually banned, people began making it on their own.  The more we've tried to regulate away the problem, the more the problem has grown... the more crime has been caused, and the more side effects have sprouted up.  Nobody wants home grown meth... just like nobody wanted moonshine made in a bathtub that burned your throat and sometimes killed people.  Drinkers during prohibition would have rather had Jack Daniels or Jim Beam... but you take what you can get.

One of these days we're going to have to learn that lesson.... again.