Rx for better understanding

By Kurt St. Angelo

A May 11 Indianapolis Star headline reads innocently enough: "Anti-meth law has cut crime in Vigo County.”

The article tells how a countywide ordinance beginning January 2005, which restricts sales of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, has led to fewer methamphetamine labs seized in the county from 71 last year to 41 this year over the same four-month period.

Clearly the number of meth labs seized in Vigo County is down, but where's the lower "crime" that the headline promised?

On its website at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/cvict_c.htm#property, the U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics offers the most up-to-date information about crime in America. However, meth-lab busts are nowhere in the Bureau's crime statistics.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, all crime fits into two categories: violent crime against people and crime against people's property, both categories of which include direct legal victims.

"Violent crime includes murder, rape and sexual assault, robbery, and assault," reads the website. "Property crimes include burglary, theft, and motor vehicle theft." If eradicating meth labs is the same as eradicating "crime," as the Indianapolis Star’s headline suggests, why aren't meth-lab
seizures listed in the U.S. Department of Justice's crime statistics?

The easy and only answer is that operating a home lab is not really a crime by any legal definition. It is merely a violation of the will of our state General Assembly, which draws most of its lines arbitrarily in the sand.

If making methamphetamine was a real crime, the directors of most pharmaceutical companies would be in jail. Instead, it is just an offense, with about as much legal and moral authority as if our state legislature prohibited our children’s home chemistry labs.

The main issue upon which voters should focus is what effect Governor Daniel ’s new bureaucratic solution will have on meth use and on real crime, as the Justice Department defines it. Will meth users resort to stealing, thieving and burglarizing the rest of us to pay for scarcer, higher priced
methamphetamine?

Not likely … at least not any more than they are now. (The U.S. Department of Justice reports that drug prohibition alone accounts for the commission of over 25 percent of all thefts in the United States.) The Governor’s new law is not targeted at the source of most illegal methamphetamine, so supply and use won’t likely be much affected.

According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, about 80 percent of meth sold in the United States is made in “super labs” in Mexico and California, using pseudoephedrine in bulk from Canada, China or India. These super labs can produce meth that is twice as pure as that made from cold tablets, which account for less than one-fifth the national supply.

The new law won’t likely ave any children in Indiana from meth-lab explosions either. No children in Indiana have yet to die due to meth-lab explosions. In fact, in an hour of Google-searching, I uncovered only six child deaths nationally since 1996.

And if it’s anhydrous ammonium fumes that contaminate homes and endanger children, it would make more sense to better control supplies of anhydrous ammonium than cold tablets.

No wonder we make no headway in our war against drugs. Black marketers will always outsmart prohibitionists. Plus they’ve got until July 1, when the new Indiana law takes effect, to get a head start.

There is a solution that would not be burdensome, yet would address the real problems of addiction. The easier it is for users to satisfy their addicted bodies’ needs, the less they will resort to real crimes to satisfy those needs, and the less they will deal with people who will kill to sell them drugs.

Methadone treatment centers give prescribed doses of heavy narcotics to addicts so they won’t have reason to steal, prostitute themselves, or endanger themselves and others to satisfy their addictions. We should extend this civility also to troubled cocaine and meth users.

As the number of meth labs go down in Indiana - thanks to better policing by pharmacists - what will the police and media do? Will they focus their attention on real crimes, or will they work harder looking for the fewer meth labs, which are themselves the direct result of drug prohibition?