Thomas Mott Osborne: “the crippling reach of methamphetamine abuse has become the Nation's leading drug problem today, and this is according…”

“the crippling reach of methamphetamine abuse has become the Nation's leading drug problem today, and this is according to a survey by 500 sheriffs departments in 45 States. It is cheap to buy. It is easy to make. It is available everywhere. It is highly addictive. Oftentimes it is addictive after just one use. So it is currently replacing cocaine and heroin in many parts of the country. It leads to increased crime, child abuse, increases in the jail population. In many parts of the country, almost 40 to 50 percent of the jail population is due to methamphetamine abuse. However, the main problem anymore is not the mom-and-pop meth lab out in the countryside. It is the superlabs. Right now 60 to 85 percent of the meth in the United States is coming from superlabs in Mexico, and this is really hard to trace. It is hard to get at. The one thing that is needed to make methamphetamine is pseudoephedrine or ephedrine, and this is manufactured in only six or seven locations around the world: Czechoslovakia, Germany, China, southeast Asia and so on. This bill would make it more difficult for meth manufacturers to obtain the pseudoephedrine necessary for producing the drug in these superlabs. H.R. 3199 includes language the House passed earlier as part of the Foreign Operations authorization bill. It identifies and publicizes the five countries which have the highest rate of diversion of pseudoephedrine to manufacturers of meth.…”