Citation

Cunningham S, Finlay K, Stoecker C. Int. J. Drug Policy 2015; 26(11): 1144-1149.

Affiliation

Department of Global Health Systems and Development, Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, New Orleans, LA, United States. Electronic address: cfstoecker@tulane.edu.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2015, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.drugpo.2015.05.020

PMID

26187186

Abstract

BACKGROUND: In 2010, Mississippi became the second state to require a prescription to purchase pseudoephedrine-based medications. Proponents of "prescription-only" laws argue that they are necessary to disrupt methamphetamine markets, but critics note the costs to legal consumers of cold medications may offset some of the laws' intended benefits.

OBJECTIVE: We evaluated the effect of prescription-only restrictions for methamphetamine precursors on state-level methamphetamine lab seizures and methamphetamine prices.

METHODS: We used a synthetic control approach to create a control state comparable to Mississippi and then used permutation testing to determine if the resulting difference was statistically significant.

RESULTS: We found that Mississippi's prescription-only law removed 2637 small methamphetamine labs in the two years after the law became effective, which represents a 77% reduction in small labs relative to the synthetic counterfactual. We found no evidence that the law impacted methamphetamine prices.

CONCLUSION: We conclude that while prescription-only laws can reduce the number of domestic small methamphetamine labs in operation, methamphetamine availability is unlikely to be materially impacted.

Language: en