Well for me I remember the big news about gangs buying up cold tablets for the pseudoephedrine that they had in them to make meth, so the pharmacies making it harder to buy them. Then the new ones on the shelves (which are marketed as ‘PE’ here) just plain don’t work at all, unlike the real ones (which you can still get but you have to ask the pharmacist for). So I read the ingredient list and googled it, and was annoyed to find my experience confirmed and that they’d replaced a really useful medication with one that basically everyone reported didn’t work.
> Well for me I remember the big news about gangs buying up cold tablets for the pseudoephedrine that they had in them to make meth, so the pharmacies making it harder to buy them.
You missed the step where cartel super-producers (that didn’t depend on small qtys of feedstock from pharmacies) just started producing 5% more to make up for it.
The organized producers appreciated the government shutting down their nibbling competitors.
Sucks for the public though, paying the price for an ineffective measure.
It's not that simple. Industrial-scale meth production (obviously) doesn't use Sudafed; amateur small-scale production does. But small-scale meth production has its own distinct externalities: it sites "meth labs" in residential areas, which catch fire, create hazardous waste problems (some of which require specialist cleaning crews), and attract additional crime.
The policy doesn't have to cut off the meth supply to be successful on its own terms.
This just isn't a factor anymore, Big Meth produces a product so cheap that it would be ridiculous to try to produce it at a small scale.
Moreover we already have the most draconian and well funded drug agency of any OECD democracy, surely they could cope with some trailer park meth labs without having to hassle everyone with allergies or a cold.
A nation wide blanket restriction is a dumb way to go about any attempt at neighborhood safety. It is a best indirect. But again, making meth in a home lab hasn't been economically viable for the better part of 10 years now, so why is the restriction still in place?
I just don’t see how selling snake oil made my neighborhood safer. Like I don’t see how those two things are connected at all other than through motivated reasoning. Not to mention anybody can still walk into my local Walgreens at 4 A.M. with a mask and a tire iron and take as much Sudafed as they’d like.
And for that matter, small-scale meth enthusiasts, wisely or not, were in fact robbing stores for it at the time. Meth access aside, there’s probably some social benefit to tamping down on robberies in these places where sick and vulnerable people need to go for their meds.
tl;dr it did stop pseudoephedrine going to meth labs BUT it has had no long term impact on the number of labs being detected nor seemingly on the availability of crystal meth.
To me that's an abject failure of a policy, but some people look at it like "we restricted a precursor successfully!" and count it as a win.
