Again this year, the cold medicine industry was the number one lobbyist in all the state legislatures that considered making pseudoephedrine-containing products available by prescription only. They won in every state, which is not surprising given that the Citizens United decision makes them even more powerful than they were in prior years. Legislators who wanted to set a prescription requirement to obtain the 15 cold medicines that can be used to make methamphetamine were simply outgunned by the financial might of the industry. Their states will again be ravaged by meth labs this year, and the industry will again pocket hundreds of millions of dollars by selling their products to meth cooks.
However, a new cold medication, trade name Tarex, may change the equation. Continue reading “A Technological Fix for Meth Labs?”