Anti-Meth Laws Have Created Black Market in Cold Pills, AP Reports

The Associated Press is still on a roll. We reported last week on the AP's "occasional series" on the failures of drug prohibition, and now the news organization is out with another devastating piece of reporting, this time on the unintended consequences of laws designed to stifle home methamphetamine manufacture.

In a Monday "AP IMPACT" article (not part of the "occasional series) titled Meth Flourishes Despite Tracking Laws, AP reported that state laws mandating electronic monitoring systems to track purchases of legal cold medicines containing pseudoephedrine that are used in meth manufacture "not only failed to curb the meth trade," but "also created a vast and highly lucrative market for profiteers to buy over-the-counter pills and sell them to meth producers at a huge markup."

Because of booming demand created in large part by the tracking laws, pill buyers can buy a box of pills for $7 or $8 and resell them for $40 to $50. That has created whole networks of people who "smurf," or make repeated small purchases of the cold pills and then sell them to meth cooks. Some are not even interested in meth, but can be homeless people looking for a few bucks or even college kids seeking weekend beer money.

"It's almost like a sub-criminal culture," DEA agent Gary Boggs told the AP. "You'll see them with a GPS unit set up in a van with a list of every single pharmacy or retail outlet. They'll spend the entire week going store to store and buy to the limit."

The electronic monitoring laws "invite more people into the criminal activity because the black market price of the product becomes so much more profitable," said rural Missouri detective Jason Grellner. "Where else can you make a 750% profit in 45 minutes?" asked Grellner, former president of the Missouri Narcotics Officers Association.

Looking at DEA data from 2000 to 2009, the AP found that the number of meth busts has started climbing again since tracking laws were enacted beginning in 2006. Meth-related activity, including arrests, drug seizures, and the discovery of abandoned meth cooking sites, was up 34% in 2009, the news organization found. In the three states -- Arkansas, Kentucky, and Oklahoma -- that have electronically tracked cold pill sales since 2008, the 2009 increase was nearly double the national increase, at 67%.

The report also found that while the tracking laws had a strong initial impact, meth producers quickly turned to smurfing to obtain the pseudoephedrine they needed. By 2009, the DEA reported 10,064 meth-related incidents, a 62% rise over the previous two years.

The AP did note that Oregon, which began requiring a prescription for pseudoephedrine products in 2006, had seemingly been successful in repressing meth cooking. It had 191 meth-related incidents in 2005 and only 12 in 2009. But that law has left hundreds of thousands of law-abiding consumers suffering because of the actions of a few.