MemeMachineGo!

There were a lot of things I’d hoped to get done Saturday, but I was impaired by an allergy-induced sinus headache: it’s tree-pollen season in the San Francisco Bay Area. Anti-histamines have never done me any noticeable good, whether over-the-counter or prescription. One thing that does help is an over-the-counter decongestant, pseudoephedrine, the active ingredient in Sudafed.

Unfortunately, it’s ceasing to be over-the-counter.

Some highlights of the Patriot Act’s new provisions that would crack down on the manufacture, distribution and use of methamphetamine:

• Move cold medicines with pseudoephedrine, a main ingredient of methamphetamine, behind the counter in retail stores.
• Impose limits on how much a person can buy: 300 30-mg pills in a month and 120 a day. An exception would be “single-use” amounts of individually packaged pseudoephedrine products.
• Require signature and identification for purchases.

The adult pseudoephedrine dosage is 60 mg, to be taken up to every six hours. So that 300 30-mg limit would last anyone for a month. But if everyone in a family of five suffers from allergies, it suddenly becomes a big problem. Further:

This provision is anti-consumer, violates privacy and would be costly. It is a woeful misallocation of resources and would not eliminate the problems.

Common products such as Nyquil, Claritin-D and Alka-Seltzer Plus Night-Time Cold Medicine - and nearly 300 other medicines containing PSE - would be stuck behind pharmacy counters. This is bad because Americans are label readers, including when shopping for cold remedies. We read boxes, check prices, determine which is best for specific symptoms, and choose accordingly.

Requiring all cold medicines that contain PSE to be taken off consumer friendly shelves and distributed only by licensed pharmacists will make it nearly impossible to comparison shop for cold remedies by price or ingredient. And as pharmacists will have to share time formerly spent dispensing and advising on prescription drugs with OTC products, this will surely raise the cost of these medications.

This could pose even more serious problems for cold sufferers in some rural or inner-city areas where a full service pharmacy is distant or inconveniently located. These consumers purchase aspirin, Tums and cold pills from the local Circle K, the corner grocer or Wal-Mart shelves. This regulatory move will limit or even eliminate timely access for them.

And what about a person working third shift or whose child becomes sick in the middle of the night? Instead of running to the 24 hour grocery store for Children’s Tylenol Cold, Mom will now have to explain to little Joey that his miserable cold will have to wait until the full service pharmacy opens at 9:00 a.m. Not everyone schedules their cold or allergy attack during pharmacy hours.

The Combat Meth Act, and its being a rider on the Patriot Act, were pushed by one of my senators, DINO Dianne Feinstein.

There have been similar measures in Oklahoma and Texas. Some pharmacies have concluded that it’s made selling pseudoephedrine more bother than it’s worth, so they’ve simply ceased carrying it. These measures seem to have curbed domestic production of meth, but to have done nothing to curb meth abuse.

Police say a massive influx of meth made by Mexican “superlabs,” which can obtain tons of pseudoephedrine in Mexico, has kept meth plentiful and potent. The number of Oklahoma users shows no sign of falling, and property crime still keeps the Oklahoma County Jail at capacity.

“We took away their production,” said Tom Cunningham, task force coordinator for the Oklahoma District Attorneys Council. “That didn’t do anything for their addiction.”

Two decades of government effort have failed to curb the availability of meth. A new analysis of federal data by The Oregonian shows that the drug’s potency has hit levels not seen in a decade. Rising purity indicates the supply of meth is growing, and it means a $25 bag of meth will last a user longer. […]

“We have seen a lot of publicity associated with people’s access to the ingredients,” said Oklahoma County Commissioner Jim Roth. “But from our local government experience, we have not seen a corresponding decline in either the jail population or the social effects that seem to have still lingered from high meth use.”

Mexican cartels took little time flooding the Oklahoma meth market after the pseudoephedrine law took effect in April 2004.

“It hit us without much delay,” Lt. Charles Smallwood, a drug investigator with the Mayes County Sheriff’s Office, said of the arrival of Mexican-made meth. “We started seeing commercial methamphetamine almost immediately.”

The Mexican meth sold in Oklahoma is increasingly potent. Drugs seized by federal agents during the first six months of this year averaged 75 percent pure, up from 37 percent two years ago, data from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration show.

In the past, sharp increases in purity have prompted comparable jumps in the number of addicts.

But declining local production combined with increasing Mexican imports appear to have canceled each other out in Oklahoma, leaving the supply of the drug stable.

From Reason magazine:

The PATRIOT Act’s new anti-meth provisions don’t end there. One would classify “methamphetamine precursors” such as pseudoephedrine in the same manner as “Schedule II” drugs” like opium in order to set domestic “production quotas.” And there are enhanced penalties and broadened definitions for “smuggling” and “money laundering” with no terrorism prerequisites.

The Heritage Foundation, which supports the PATRIOT Act and general drug-control measures, nevertheless charges that even the current loose definitions of money laundering and smuggling are leading to the “overcriminalization” of petty regulatory violations. […]

If bending the PATRIOT Act to combat meth isn’t legislative mission creep, nothing is.

It’s a month before the federal purchase limits take effect, and until 9/30 for the ID requirement to take effect. Stock up now. No, wait, don’t — that would look awfully suspicious.