MiniThin2550EF_36ctBtl_CMYKBack in my late teens and early twenties I had a particular fondness for White Crosses, the little bronchodilater pills that one could by legally at gas stations all over the country. They were ephedrine tablets, designed for folks with asthma but used with great gusto by dieters and for recreational purposed. And also by long haul drivers nationwide, which is how they got their other common nickname – trucker speed.

I used to indulge on long road trips. They were great for driving, kept you alert and entertained while undertaking the innately dull task of racing down the interstate from point A to point B. And as someone who suffered with occasional asthma throughout my twenties, it was easy to use the old ‘medicinal purposes’ justification. They weren’t without their side effects however, after a long night with a bottle of Mini Thins things like insomnia, agitation, irritability, dry mouth, sweating, and heart palpitations were not uncommon.

And not surprising, considering ephedrine is pretty much an amphetamine. And as with all good things, the days of cheap trucker speed at the gas station came to an end. Ephedrine containing products became increasingly difficult to obtain through the 90’s and now are available only with a prescription in the U.S., U.K. and Australia. This is largely because ephedrine can be used as a precursor in the production of methamphetamine – crystal meth – which became the drug to panic and rend our garments about in the Naughties. All the meth-induced panic resulted in the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act which was passed as an amendment to the renewal of the Patriot Act in 2006. Basically, it resulted in tight regulations on any ephedrine or pseudoephedrine containing product. The effect of the regulation is that most of your over the counter allergy and cold medicine were sequestered behind the counter and if one bought too much Sudafed, one’s name was passed on to the Drug Enforcement Agency. Shortly thereafter, one’s meth lab was probably shut down by heavily armed men while one was handcuffed face down in some Missouri trailer park.*

onion_imagearticle2966The idea, of course, is that if the meth manufacturers can’t get the chemicals that they need to make their product then methamphetamine will disappear from the world. Crime will become a thing of the past, tweaked out teens will become Rhodes Scholars and money will grow on trees. Perfect world.

I’m not much into drugs anymore. Quite the contrary, in fact, these daysI tend to just say no. However, that abstinence has nothing to do with Nancy Reagan or  any of the other attempts by the powers that be to convince me that drugs are wrong or their endless ‘War on Drugs’. It has nothing to do with prohibition or criminalization or heavy handed enforcement. These things don’t work. They haven’t worked in the last several decades and they aren’t going to work in the next several. No matter how illegal you make them or how many people you put in jail or how hard you make it to acquire drugs, a certain number of people are going to use them and a subset of those people are going to abuse them. All the time, money and energy would be better spent on treating addicts and attempting to get them clean. We have a problem that no matter how hard we hit it isn’t going to go away.

When I heard about the pseudophedrine and ephedrine regulations, I was pretty confident that  keeping Sudafed behind the counter at the Wal-Mart was  going to have approximately no effect on crystal meth production and distribution. It was just another prohibition effort. And now, a few years later, I’ve got the facts to support that hypothesis. A group led by Russell Callaghan of the Canadian Center for Addiction and Mental Health asked whether these types of regulations were doing any good. Their results, published this month in Drug and Alcohol Dependence, suggest that this policy is just the latest failure in the endless war on drugs.

Like the U.S., Canada began to regulate the import and export of pseudoephedrine and ephedrine in January of 2003 and the domestic distribution of those compounds in July of the same year. They then took the further step of regulating the import and export of other essential chemicals used in the processing of methamphetamine in January of 2004. Callaghan and his colleagues asked what effects, if any, these regulations have had on methamphetamine-related emergency room admissions, a fairly good indicator of your population’s drug problem. As a comparison, they also looked at the number of cocaine, heroin and alcohol related ER admissions in the same period of time.

M~ SUN0609n Crystal M1jpgWhat they found is, to me, not surprising. The January 2003 import/export regulations had no impact on meth related ER admissions. However, the July 2003 domestic distribution regulations on ephedrine and pseudoephedrine and the January 2004 regulations on the import of meth processing chemicals were associated with 20% and 21% increases in meth related ER admissions respectively. During the same time period the number of emergency room visits due to cocaine, alcohol and heroin did not change.

In short, policies of prohibition have certainly not reduced methaphetamine use in Canada and in the time since their enactment, there have been significant increases in the number of meth related injuries. Now obviously this study addresses the problem in Canada, and in some ways it is understandable that if you spend your life in some rest stop of a town on the frozen plains of Saksatchewan or Manitoba that you may want a bit of a pick me up, but it is also safe to assume that similar regulations in other countries are as effective as those in Canada. Regulating ephedrine and pseudoephedrine is simply not effective in reducing methaphetamine use.

A good question is why not? If you can eliminate production why wouldn’t meth use drop? Short answer – you aren’t eliminating production. Callaghan hypothesises that the increases may be due to the replacement of small-scale producers – the folks making meth in their shed – by international criminal organizations that don’t buy their chemicals at the local drug store. This shift in production may have resulted in an increase in meth supply rather than the intended reduction. With the increase in quantity, there is likely to be a decrease in both price and quality as well. More meth, cheaper meth, impure meth.

Whatever the reason, this is just another example of a failed policy of prohibition and criminalization. It isn’t working. Governments around the world have been losing the War on Drugs for decades and it is time for a cease fire. I don’t know what the road forward is, I’m not that smart. I don’t actually think it would be a great idea to make hardcore drugs like methamphetamine, heroin and the like completely legal. But I am smart enough to know that the road we’re currently driving on is going nowhere.

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*Just to clarify, this has never happened to me personally. I messed around with meth a bit, but it wasn’t really my thing. I was (and still am) a terrible middle class snob and always consider meth to be a white trash drug. But for a while, I lived next door to a meth dealer who used to give me free samples in order to keep me from calling the police. I’m not too snobby to turn down free drugs.

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Alt-country supergroup Golden Smog featured members of The Jayhawks, Soul Asylum and Wilco. Their 1996 record “Down By The Old Mainstream” is rollicking alt country gold. As a Wilco fan, the songs with Jeff Tweedy at the mic are my favorites – particularly this one.

Buy “Down By The Old Mainstream” from Golden Smog - Down By the Old Mainstream.

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Pharmacist

Crystal Meth

 
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