Oregon defeats the meth monster

An op-ed in the New York Times brought my attention to a small but important victory within my home state. Thank God those meth addicts will no longer be skulking around the podunk shithole-towns that scar the otherwise striking and beautiful landscape of Eastern Oregon. Or, at least, their numbers have decreased somewhat due to an Oregon law put in place four years ago that made pseudoephedrine---a key ingredient in meth production---a prescription-only drug.

Because, you see, just selling it behind the counter, like condoms and cigarettes, does hardly a thing to prevent the meth heads from acquiring enough of it to manufacture the drug. Once Sudafed and other products started being sold this way, with limits on how much one could purchase, they realized that they simply needed to visit more than one store to obtain the necessary amount.

Then, once electronic tracking systems were put into place to monitor purchases across various locales, the "smurfers," as they are called, figured out that sending MULTIPLE PEOPLE in the gang out to buy individual amounts would equal enough pseudoephedrine to produce enough meth for all. Everybody wins!!

Sometimes we urbanites forget the scourge that meth is, especially in rural America. But the drug devastates small towns and their economies, and, more importantly, REALLY FUCKS UP YOUR FACE.

Example here (I'd rather not post a picture, because it's just disturbing as hell).

love,
a proud Oregonian

PS: If you are interested in learning further about the meth epidemic and are an ardent lover of depressing non-fiction like me, you ought to read Methland by Nick Reding, a journalist who explored the effects of the drug and its production on a small Iowa town. There's a totally crazy chapter which begins with the story of a man who exploded his house and melted the skin off his body while lighting a cigarette in his basement meth lab.