I am from Washington and I am one of the many people that live there that has quite bad allergies. Without pseudoephedrine, an allergy medicine, my allergies are out of control at certain points in the year. When I was younger it was not a problem because my mom could go to the pharmacy and pick up as many boxes as needed. However, people began abusing that privilege and started buying the drug to make meth. In order to stop this abuse the state of Washington decided to move pseudoephedrine to behind the counter. Now you can only purchase a certain amount of the medicine and must show a valid ID at checkout. This has significantly hurt sales at pharmacies but it also has decreased the number of meth labs in the state. Each state has a different policy on the purchase of pseudoephedrine. For instance, here in Oregon people cannot get pseudoephedrine without a prescription from their doctor. This law went into effect in 2004 and since then the amount of meth labs has decreased by 97%. This policy has a very clear outcome. So prior to 2004 people were able to buy as much pseudoephedrine as they felt necessary, which then caused people to abuse the drug and use it in meth. This then caused the government to put a restriction on the drug, which resulted in a large decrease in meth labs. The causality that resulted from this policy is very clear and hard to argue.
