RESPECT FOR RIGHTS VITAL IN WAR ON METH

The province of British Columbia has taken several steps to combat the
devastating effects of crystal meth - including most recently a plan
to monitor the retail sales of products containing
pseudoephedrine.

While we welcome any provincial government support in the battle
against this drug, we urge caution in adopting methods which
potentially violate the privacy of innocent people.

Every measure adopted by government must be balanced against the costs
it imposes on society. It is critical that as a society we do all that
we can to stamp out the use and production of meth - and part of that
strategy must mean crippling the ability of dealers to supply the drug.

The challenge in controlling meth is that it can be relatively easily
cooked up using otherwise legal and innocuous substances, such as
iodine and cold medicine. Rather than growing these ingredients in a
secret garden or importing at great risk and cost from Latin America,
they are readily and legally available to drug labs, posing a
challenge for lawmakers and police about how to stem supply of the raw
ingredients.

The B.C. government has recently decided to ask retailers and
pharmacists to monitor people who buy products containing
pseudoephedrine in bulk. While the intention is good, we question
whether monitoring the shopping habits of possibly innocent consumers
is the best way to go.

First, as Solicitor General John Les himself admits, the big meth
producers are not buying pseudoephedrine from pharmacies and grocery
stores. They are purchasing bulk quantities commercially. Developing a
system for monitoring and tracking those sales is likely a more
critical step than tracking low volume purchases in stores.

Secondly, asking pharmacists to track the personal purchases of
shoppers who do buy cold medication raises some troubling privacy
concerns. People who may have no intention of making meth from their
cold syrup may now be tracked by pharmacists and retailers and have
their activities reported.

Some may say that the ends justify the means - that the ravages of
meth justify the potential but infrequent violation of a few people's
privacy. That argument has some merit.

But other provinces have adopted measures which may be as effective
and do not carry with them the same privacy-violating side effects of
monitoring purchases. Saskatchewan and Manitoba require medicine
retailers to keep products containing pseudoephedrine behind the
counter and sell them only in limited quantities. They are also in the
process of limiting the availability of cold medicines to pharmacies
only, keeping other retailers from selling the drugs. These measures
limit the supply of pseudoephedrine without violating the privacy of
those who are just trying to fight a cold.

Finding a way to track large commercial sales - which means violating
the privacy of companies rather than people - may be yet more effective.

The issue here is not the seriousness of the problem. Meth is a
devastating drug and we need to do all we can to limit and reduce its
availability, provide treatment to those who want it and give people
every reason not to try it in the first place.

We only urge lawmakers to exercise judgment in taking those steps with
the fewest unintended consequences.