A BAD LAW IS A BAD LAW

The Washington Missourian has a headline story today "Drug Unit Commander Refutes Criticism of Law" covering the public backlash that has erupted over the psuedoephedrine prescription law. The upshot of the article seems to be that Det. Sgt. Jason Grellner believes that the end justifies the means, that the solution to the meth problem justifies any inconvenience or expense that the public is forced to bear. His logic in trying to justify his actions is seriously flawed.

"The city of Washington can, under state law, pass an ordinance that is more restrictive than state law," Grellner told The Missourian. "Case in point, numerous smoking bans in other cities - cigarettes contain drugs. This is no different."

This is entirely different than the regulation of cigarettes. In the first place, people can still buy cigarettes without additional cost being imposed upon them by the requirement of receiving a permission slip to do so. Secondly, the cities are regulating where smoking can occur, not smoking itself. Thirdly, it is at least possible to make the argument that second hand smoke causes harm to persons other than the smoker. Taking cold medicine impacts the patient and no one else.

"The city of Washington was not asked to reclassify this drug," he noted. "They are simply acting in behalf of public safety and regulating the sale. It is no different than counties or cities regulating the sale of alcohol. That's why we have dry cities and counties."

The argument is not whether the city has the right to do this. Contrary to the assertions of the ACLU I suspect that the city of Washington is well within its legal authority. The question is whether the actions of the city are targeting the innocent while letting the guilty move to another area, without further legal action taken against them. This brings up another point; is it just to institute a policy which will only send Franklin County's problem to some other part of the state instead of permanently removing it?

"Grellner added that the state of Kentucky implemented a "stop sale" system of monitoring pseudoephedrine-based medicines that was not effective and meth labs increased by 47 percent in the state. He added that monitoring drives up the "black market" value of pseudoephedrine-based pills. In Franklin County, the black market value of a box of cold medicine containing pseudophedrine is $50. In Kentucky the same package is valued at $75."

The reason that this market exists is that the illegal consumer of pseudoephedrine has not been removed from the marketplace. Laws targeting the law abiding generally will have very little effect on the criminal.

"A knee jerk reaction is made to a problem immediately without thought," he said. "This has been scrutinized, discussed and planned to end the meth problem. Here we stand 13 years later and over 50,000 labs later and we stand with the same problem," Grellner told The Missourian. "I hardly refer to this as a knee jerk reaction."

The amount of planning that has gone into a law in and of itself says very little about the end product. A well planned bad law is still a bad law. The state needs to pass laws that make the manufacturing and distribution of methamphetamine such a risky act that the profit motive is outweighed by the possible penalty that will be paid if the criminal is caught.