Hiding the Cold Medicine Doesn't Stop the Meth Problem

Grits for Breakfast has an excellent post explaining how lawmakers' enthusiasm for limiting the sale of cold medicine has done NOTHING to stem the country's growing methamphetamine problem. To be sure, it has reduced the number of meth labs in this country. The problem is that local "cooks" have simply been replaced, and then some, by Mexican drug cartels, with all the other evils that they bring to the equation, while overdoses and deaths from methamphetamine have actually increased. Grits is correct--the only way to truly address the methamphetamine problem--and all the other illegal drugs, for that matter--in this country is to reallocate the resources to prevention and treatment and away from the criminal justice system.