In what way did it backfire? It's a useful decongestant. But it also basically is methamphetamine, with just a couple easily-reversible Rubik's turns to make it a decongestant instead of an ultra-powerful stimulant.
Water, consisting of hydrogen "basically is" and explosive, as is table salt, consisting of Sodium, which explodes when coming into contact with water. How can we let these two dangerous substances go unregulated! Think of the children! who will get to have interesting high school chemistry labs, that is.
That Sudafed "basically is" meth misunderstands chemistry, and the resourcefulness of the real life Walter Whites of the world. Hells Angels and the Cartels operate under the nose of the DEA so there's no way meth or drugs are going away.
It's time for the government to admit they lost the current battle of the war on drugs to drugs. Current tactics aren't working and it's time to take the war to the demand side of the equation. Cut down the demand for drugs by getting addicts off opiates and stimulants with an army of therapists and councilors and rehab programs. With a large helping of harm reduction and government assistance. Wishful thinking, I know, but making all forms of basic chemistry illegal is like trying to make water not wet.
Didn’t prevent people from getting meth, but did allow drug companies to make millions selling a useless compound. I doubt that was the intent of the legislation.
The same company sells both compounds. I don't think this was a huge moneymaker. I think the PE thing was just there to retain the sales that moving Sudafed behind the counter sacrificed. That doesn't make it OK, but it does sort of argue against the idea that the regulation was just a moneymaking scheme.
Only if you judge the outcome strictly by how many people are consuming meth, but there are other important endpoints to this policy, like "reducing the number of backyard meth labs", which are problems in their own right.
Yes, the punchline of the joke is that synthesizing pseudoephedrine from meth is more convenient than buying Sudafed after the law on restricting sales ostensibly to reduce meth production.
i.e., the law didn't do much to halt meth production but did put a bunch of barriers around a useful drug _and_ promoted the use of phenylephrine instead, a useless drug in pill form. A huge net negative.
