In the war on drugs, one victory

Action by states and the Congress has resulted in a sharp decrease in the number of US meth labs.

from the July 6, 2007 edition

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Would that this were the end of America's meth challenge, though.

The vacuum left by the steep decline in the home-cooked stuff is being filled by meth smuggled in from well-supplied labs in Mexico, which account for about 80 percent of the US market. Success with the US labs hints that in the drug fight, it is perhaps easier to go after the small fry than the big fish. (Indeed, an effective method to discourage theft of the narcotic-based pain reliever OxyContin is to encourage pharmacies to lock their supply in a safe – yet theft is only a small source of this abused drug compared with the big, open pipeline of the Internet.)

Meth use is a mixed picture. It's down significantly among teens, most likely because they're scared by what they hear about it. But the number of Americans who have used meth has dropped only slightly, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health. Other data show meth spreading to the Eastern US and urban areas.

Even if meth use overall appears steady, the big dropoff in labs frees local law enforcement from the costly, time consuming, and dangerous work of shutting down and cleaning up domestic meth labs.

That means they should be in a better position to focus on meth from Mexico, which also has the attention of the DEA. That agency has trained more than 2,000 officers in Mexico in how to shut down and clean up meth labs and is also working internationally to stop the diversion of chemicals to these labs.

The war on drugs has many fronts, but at least on one of them, there's been real progress.

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