Jarrod Gilbert: The good drugs are returning back to chemists’ shelves

While the return of those cold and flu products may influence the markets, it won’t have a negative impact overall. Photo / Getty Images

OPINION

If you have a cold or flu, the new Government has come to your rescue by returning the good drugs back to chemists’ shelves.

The reason they were removed in the first place was because those good drugs have pseudoephedrine in them, a key ingredient in the manufacture of methamphetamine. The thinking was that if we make that ingredient harder to come by, we would reduce the methamphetamine supply in New Zealand.

It was brilliantly simple, and equally idiotic.

Even those with only an elementary understanding of economics will know if demand for a product is not diminished, supply will recover to meet it. And that’s what happened, but as it did so some thoroughly unintended (although certainly foreseeable) consequences occurred that forever changed the criminal underworld in New Zealand. Reversing the policy now will not change that.

The great problem with a genie, as we all know, is once it’s out of the bottle, the darn thing will never get back in.

With less supply of pseudoephedrine in New Zealand, local drug entrepreneurs set their sights overseas instead. It turned out to be easy to source in bulk overseas, and we saw a wave of pseudoephedrine imports, largely out of Asia. But the thinking quickly evolved. Why import the ingredient, when you can just bring in the finished product?

Customs and police busts very soon began uncovering massive imports of meth, meaning, of course, that many equally large shipments were slipping through the net, coming from Asia, and Central and South America.

Small-time meth cooks were replaced by massive international factories. Instead of reducing supply as intended, supply was actually going through the roof. And, subsequently, the price of methamphetamine plummeted.

This is all bad news stemming from a terribly simple – and just plain terrible – policy. But that’s not the worst of it.

In making these international connections, our local crooks were introduced to big, international players.

Those players taught them a whole heap of underworld dance moves, turning our scene from a local disco to an international concert. Our underworld was transformed.

Of course, the policy of removing cold and flu medication wasn’t responsible for all of this country’s international criminal connections (some already existed), but without a shadow of a doubt it broadened and accelerated this process.

The reversal of the policy cannot change that. And while the return of those cold and flu products may influence the markets slightly (perhaps some unemployed meth cooks may come back) it won’t have a significantly negative impact overall. And, of course, you and I will get better and easier relief from the cold and flu.

On balance, then, without question this decision by the new Government is the right one. But the damage has already been done.

And here we arrive at an altogether more curious issue. That is, can we learn lessons from the past?

Simplistic solutions to complex problems have proven to have unintended consequences. And yet the new Government does have a few of these types of crime and justice policies on offer.

· Dr Jarrod Gilbert is the Director of Independent Research Solutions and a sociologist at the University of Canterbury.