Get ready for a run on cold medicine across the river

On Sunday, the Wall Street Journal editorial page included this:

Oregon relocated its cold medicines behind the counter last October, and Governor [Ted] Kulongoski credits the move with drastically reducing the number of meth labs in the state. Ten months later, he's ready to further burden Oregonians without any evidence that prescription requirements will help close more meth labs.

In any case, the focus on lab seizures may have gone about as far as it can go. Local labs are disappearing but usage isn't. That's because more than half of all meth used in the U.S. is produced in Mexico and smuggled across the border. One advantage of shutting down small neighborhood operations is that it frees up law enforcement resources to pursue the gangs and mobsters responsible for most of the trafficking.

We don't deny that Oregon's prescription approach to the supply problem could have some short-term benefit. But it will also exacerbate the drug problems of neighboring Washington State and California, not to mention open the U.S. market to more imported meth. Oregon might also find itself butting heads with the federal Food and Drug Administration, which regulates over-the-counter drugs. Before he signs this bill, Governor Kulongoski might want to weigh the cost and inconvenience to Oregonians against the slim chance that it will fix the state's meth problem.

Well, apparently the governor has weighed that cost, and decided it's worth it. Kulongoski (who fights for the strangest issues, while leaving seemingly more significant causes wanting) has signed legislation requiring a prescription for cold medicine containing pseudoephedrine. The decongestant, which is found in many over-the-counter cold and allergy remedies, is also the key ingredient in the brutal drug methamphetamine.

As a result, stores in Yreka, Calif. and Vancouver, Wash. will have to stock up on the Sudafed, because every allergy-crazed and stuffy-nosed Oregonian within driving distance of the border will be stocking up very soon.

I liked what Rogue Pundit had to say a couple of months ago. First, he quoted a Statesman Journal editorial, which read in part:

Waiting in line to buy Sudafed is one thing; having to see your doctor for a prescription is another.

One in six people in this state has no health insurance. They would be out of luck. So would insured people who fell sick after office hours.

Already-burdened medical offices would have to prescribe by phone or squeeze in countless extra appointments.

This seems unnecessary. Drug companies announced this week that they are reformulating their cold medications anyway. They'll replace pseudoephedrine-based remedies with phenylephrine, a decongestant that can't be reprocessed to make meth.

Of course, not that long ago, drug companies said that meth couldn't be made from liquid forms of cold medicines, but that proved false in short order, so this claim that meth can't be made from phenylephrine has to be taken with a huge grain of salt. Instead of putting the squeeze on millions of law-abiding Oregonians when more than a third of the state's meth comes across the porous U.S. border, Rogue Pundit suggested a few other ideas for state regulation:

• [Meth] Cookers get red phosphorus from matchbook strikers. Ban matchbooks, and maybe we'd even deter a smoker or two.
• Red phosphorus is mixed with iodine to make hydroiodic acid. Wouldn't controlling iodine impact far less people than restricting our access to cold medications?
• What about naphtha, sulfuric acid, muriatic acid (diluted hydrochloric acid, used for instance in pools), lye, or some of the other caustic and acidic chemicals used in various meth recipes? How about ether, something often found in engine starting fluids? These are dangerous chemicals already, so further restricting one or more of them would seemingly make life safer as well.
• It's not as if there aren't other sources for ephedrine. Ephedra is a genus of perennial plants found in many parts of the world. The species native to the U.S. only contain trace amounts of ephedrine, but various Asian species contain enough to make its extraction feasible...something which was done for various medications until scientists learned how to make ephedrine artificially. Meth labs that extract ephedrine from Ephedra plant material are not completely unheard of in the U.S. The plants though do take a couple years to produce decent concentrations of the "desired" alkaloids.

The benefits of these increased restrictions on pseudoephedrine will be short-lived, both with the impending production of cold meds with phenylephrine and the ability of meth cooks to come up with new recipes. Much as I want more effective means to reduce the availability of methamphetamine, I don't think that making all pseudoephedrine-containing medications into controlled substances is a step in the right direction.

But when politicians are desperate to give the appearance that they're doing something effective in the war on drugs...

They take up strange issues, while leaving the more important ones lying on the legislative floor.