I admit I haven’t been following the “meth crisis” much, but the
bill before the General Assembly is much scarier than any drug–even
one with horror stories about instant addiction and seven uses before a
person becomes a “paranoid schizophrenic” and hazmat teams needed to
clean meth labs. Drug scares have been around for ages. “Reefer
Madness” in the 20s, the great warning movies of the 70s about angel
dust, stories of instant death from smoking crack, and now this.
What
makes meth different is that it can be cooked from ephedrine or
pseudoephedrine, which are ingredients in some decongestants. The NC
Senate had proposed limiting sales to pharmacies. The NC House revision
will effectively do the same thing. Both require the products be stored
in locked cases with access limited to only trained employees. Would-be
purchasers will need to provide some form of identification and video
cameras will be required to record transactions. Training must either
be done by the Methamphetamine Task Force (also created by the bill) or
in a program approved by the task force. Two obvious repercussions will
be less availability of decongestants and less choice among products as
stores decide its cheaper to forgo sales than try to comply and those
that do comply make do with less shelf space for the products
This expansion of state power and limit on the market
still will not prevent anything. According to one House member, police
would examine store logs only if there was a big meth problem in an
area, so expect cooks to go a little further afield to make their
purchases.
