Cooking Meth: How Government Manufactured a Drug Epidemic by Roger Roots

Cooking Meth: How Government Manufactured a Drug Epidemic by Roger Roots " Since the early 1990s – in response to efforts by Congress to require prescriptions to purchase such products – pharmaceutical companies and retailers such as Target, Walgreens, CVS and Winn-Dixie have restricted sales of pseudoephedrine-containing products. Purchasers have been limited to buying small quantities and required to show I.D. to purchase them. In 2005, Congress passed the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act (CMEA) as an amendment to the renewal of the USA PATRIOT Act. The CMEA requires record-keeping and identification of all sales and reports to law enforcement of any "suspicious" transactions. Purchasers are limited to "3.6 grams of pseudoephedrine base" per day and 9 grams per month. (Buying more than that is a federal misdemeanor.) (Ironically, the very first arrest under the CMEA occurred when an Iowa allergy sufferer named Tim Naveau was prosecuted in 2006 for purchasing too much Claritin D. Naveau had stocked up on the allergy medication because his teenage son, who was also an allergy sufferer, needed several packages because he was headed off to a church camp.) An Epidemic of Entrapment Restrictions on the purchase of meth precursor chemicals have been a boon to law enforcement entrapment schemes. For years, undercover government agents have been have been launching, building, supplying, and then busting meth manufacturing operations. Claims of entrapment are so closely linked to methamphetamine manufacturing cases that most meth-lab conviction appeals focus on officer conduct rather than defendant conduct. "