Lots of discussion in the blogosphere about the New York Times article Grits discussed earlier on how Mexican drug cartels benefitted most from the anti-meth laws one blogger dubbed the "War on Sniffles." Here's a sampling:
Lupinus points out that it's now easier to buy meth than to get pseudoephedrine for your cold. Notes Shaine Mata, "Pseudoephedrine is not restricted in Mexico. Nobody stuck that in their calculator. Add that to the DOH! column." Perhaps distracted by her pending trip to Holland, Majikthise seemed surpised by the news, but at Reason Hit and Run, Jacob Sullum declared, "Well, nobody saw this coming...except for anyone who gave the policy a moment's thought." The Angry Fag thinks Sudafed restrictions are an "exercise in futility and wasteful government spending." Conservative Think says the Times article is a "Lesson in how markets work." Desert Rat Democrat invokes "the law of unintended consequences." Bloggers openly discuss the new black market for Sudafed. (In this punitive age, that doesn't seem wise, does it?) Pete Guither and Mark Kleiman disagree on the moral to the story. Jeff Taylor predicts, "Next up: Cough drops."
what is yet to be reported by mass media is that addicts have a new recipe for ice (which pseudoephedrine is not an ingredient of).
ReplyDeleteThe new stuff - it's cheap, it's odorless, it's simple enough for a first grader to throw together, and the streets are already full of it. Worse still, it generates a quicker addiction and far greater mental instability than "nazi meth".
It would appear the process of 'blowback' is now in operation; when a sufficient number of cold-and-flu sufferes get their backs up and demand to know why they must suffer because of the laws, the pols will have some mighty fast two-stepping to do. One more case of governmental over-reach bouncing back to bite the pols who proposed this legislation where they evidently keep their brains...
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