Police think this is a relatively new innovation, but it's spreading quickly.Only a few years ago, making meth required an elaborate lab – with filthy containers simmering over open flames, cans of flammable liquids and hundreds of pills. The process gave off foul odors, sometimes sparked explosions and was so hard to conceal that dealers often "cooked" their drugs in rural areas.
But now drug users are making their own meth in small batches using a faster, cheaper and much simpler method with ingredients that can be carried in a knapsack and mixed on the run. The "shake-and-bake" approach has become popular because it requires a relatively small number of pills of the decongestant pseudoephedrine – an amount easily obtained under even the toughest anti-meth laws that have been adopted across the nation to restrict large purchases of some cold medication.
This story has some pretty horrifying implications if you game it through.
2 comments:
Just as prohibition made a nation of beer drinkers into a nation of whiskey drinkers, the drug war has made a nation of pot smokers into a nation or meth tweakers.
The problem isn't the drugs, its that the drugs are illegal. As long as they are illegal there will be economic incentive to make more and more powerful drugs that require smaller and smaller doses...
Legalize drugs, all drugs, and this will stop.
Seems to be working in Portugal.
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