@article{ref1,
title="Is Mississippi's prescription-only precursor control law a prescription to decrease the production and raise the price of methamphetamine?",
journal="International journal on drug policy",
year="2015",
author="Cunningham, Scott and Finlay, Keith and Stoecker, Charles",
volume="26",
number="11",
pages="1144-1149",
abstract="BACKGROUND: In 2010, Mississippi became the second state to require a prescription to purchase pseudoephedrine-based medications. Proponents of &quot;prescription-only&quot; 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. <br><br>OBJECTIVE: We evaluated the effect of prescription-only restrictions for methamphetamine precursors on state-level methamphetamine lab seizures and methamphetamine prices. <br><br>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. <br><br>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. <br><br>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.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="0955-3959",
doi="10.1016/j.drugpo.2015.05.020",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.drugpo.2015.05.020"
}