TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2015//
TI  - Is Mississippi's prescription-only precursor control law a prescription to decrease the production and raise the price of methamphetamine?
JO  - International journal on drug policy
A1  - Cunningham, Scott
A1  - Finlay, Keith
A1  - Stoecker, Charles
SP  - 1144
EP  - 1149
VL  - 26
IS  - 11
N2  - 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. <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>
LA  - en
SN  - 0955-3959
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.drugpo.2015.05.020
ID  - ref1
ER  -