Methamphetamine

Even though a bill has yet to be introduced in the Missouri General Assembly to return pseudoephedrine to its pre-1976 prescription-only status, both sides have begun to muster arguments and support. A recent poll found strong opposition nationwide for taking pseudoephedrine from behind the counter and putting it behind a prescription wall. Many law enforcement officers now believe that more pseudoephedrine sold in Missouri is used to make meth than to treat cold symptoms, a notion that the pharmaceutical industry disputes.

Nebraska lawmakers have dropped a bill that would require pharmacists to check an electronic database before selling products containing pseudoephedrine, an ingredient sometimes used to make methamphetamine. The bill, LB20, from Senator Beau McCoy of Omaha was tabled after disagreement over whether pharmacists should be immune from lawsuits under the proposed law.

Jim Hightower, the best-selling author of "Swim Against the Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go With the Flow," opines on the drug prohibitionists' war against pseudoephedrine. He says restricting its sale has created a very lucrative black market for the pills, luring thousands of new peddlers, hustlers and opportunists into the illicit meth underworld.

Electronic systems that track sales of the cold medicine used to make methamphetamine have failed to curb the drug trade and instead created a vast, highly lucrative market for profiteers to buy over-the-counter pills and sell them to meth producers at a huge markup. An Associated Press review of federal data shows that the lure of such easy money has drawn thousands of new people into the methamphetamine underworld over the last few years.

It has been a year since Prime Minister John Key declared war on the drug P (methamphetamine). The authorities, and Mr. Key, had hoped to see P prices rising as evidence that the anti-P campaign was working. But that hasn't happened.

CVS, the nation's largest drug-store chain, is paying what’s considered the largest civil penalty ever — $75 million — assessed under the Controlled Substances Act as well as forfeiting $2.6 million in profits from the sales of medicines that contain pseudoephedrine — a key ingredient to making meth.