Step Away from the Cold Medicine

Government's drug war fuels meth problem

Radley Balko | December 21, 2006

(Page 2 of 2)

Pfizer eventually made the switch, and put out the phenylephrine medication Sudafed PE.

There's just one problem. Phenylephrine doesn't work, and most in the pharmaceutical industry know it. Thanks to the new law and pressure from Congress, millions of customers have been wasting their money on a cold medication that's no more effective than a placebo.

As you might expect, pharmaceutical industry critics have seized on this, too: Rep. Henry Waxman, for example, has asked the FDA to investigate Pfizer for marketing a useless medication. Not wanting to upset Bush administration drug warriors, the FDA has thus far refused.

But don't feel too bad for Pfizer. Given all the abuse the drug companies were taking for what was a blatant, unintended misuse of their product, you could almost forgive them for putting the new product on the shelves, even if they knew it was useless -- almost.

What's not forgivable is that according to the Wall Street Journal, once Pfizer's new product was ready to go, the company switched sides, and began to lobby in favor of laws to put pseudoephedrine cold medicine behind the counter. Because the company had a non-pseudoephedrine alternative, the new laws basically cleared the shelves of Pfizer's competitors.

So Americans' access to cold medicine has been restricted, we've embarked on questionable sting operations that likely ensnare innocent people, and the FDA is allowing a useless medication to be sold to U.S. consumers. And to what end? Meth is more available and more potent than it ever was.

Typical drug war folly. This is probably the place to point out that drug war itself is the bad government policy gave us the crude form of methampehtamine that's so popular today in the first place. Think back to alcohol prohibition -- alcohol was manufactured, shipped, and stored on the black market, just as illicit drugs are today. Consequently, much of the booze that was available was concentrated, potent, and often toxic.

Deaths and hospitalizations from alcohol poisoning soared. Some who tried concoctions made with methanol literally drank themselves blind.

The similarities between so-called "bathtub gin" and modern meth are inescapable. When alcohol prohibition was repealed in 1932, the home brews dried up (not all of them, but the vast majority of them).

We don't swig basement-brewed booze anymore because it's vile and hazardous – we now have an enormous variety of safe-in-moderation liquors to chose from that are sold openly, and consequently are regulated by market forces. Were conventional amphetamines less strictly controlled, I think you'd see the same thing happen with cruder drugs like meth and crack cocaine.

President Bush wants us to take some time to make ourselves more aware of the meth problem. Fine. But I'd encourage Americans to look beyond what the White House or the Office of National Drug Control Policy tells you. The government's having a hard time solving the meth problem because the government helped create it.

Radley Balko is a senior editor with Reason magazine. He publishes the weblog, TheAgitator.com.

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