Content about Illegal drug trade

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — The National Association of Chain Drug Stores announced that it has joined pain care advocacy and other healthcare organizations in urging members of Congress to help address the problem of prescription drug diversion and abuse.  

PORTLAND, Ore. — Prescription-only pseudoephedrine regulation has no impact on the methamphetamine trade, according to a Cascade Policy Institute study on the 2005 Oregon law, which restricts access to medicines containing pseudoephedrine.

WHAT IT MEANS AND WHY IT'S IMPORTANT — That one of the latest attempts to require prescriptions for cough-cold remedies containing pseudoephedrine appears headed for failure isn't just good news for the retailers that sell those products and the people who need them, it also may encourage those trying to curb the manufacture and use of methamphetamine to focus their efforts on methods that already work, such as the National Precursor Log Exchange, also known as NPLEx, a real-time, industry-funded electronic system that tracks sales of PSE products and is

ROCKVILLE, Md. — Methamphetamine use is down by 50%, even as use of illicit drugs continued to climb between 2008 and 2010, according to a national survey conducted by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration that was released last week.

The number of current methamphetamine users decreased from 731,000 people ages 12 years and older (0.3% of the population) in 2006  to 353,000 (0.1%) in 2010.

NEW YORK — "Fake drugs are a big threat and an exploding threat," Kumar Kibble, deputy director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, told the news program "60 Minutes" in a segment that appeared Sunday night.

WHAT IT MEANS AND WHY IT'S IMPORTANT — The forward-looking vision employed by Gov. Jay Nixon in exploring “next steps” in fighting methamphetamine abuse before even the last step has been put into place and enacted is, in a matter of speaking, extremely short-sighted. It doesn’t even make fiscal sense, because the National Precursor Log Exchange will do more to curb many of the costs associated with fighting meth addicts without conversely increasing the costs associated with fighting a cold.