Tracking Used To Keep An Eye On Drugs

A tracking system is being used in the United States of America to keep track of such pharmaceutical drugs as pseudoephedrine. The reason for wanting to keep track of these pharmaceuticals is that they can be used to make methamphetamine. Methamphetamine is an illegal drug which is gaining in popularity.

Pseudoephedrine is a common ingredient of allergy medicines. Because it is common, by tracking products that contain this ingredient it will make it a lot harder for criminals to go from chemist to chemist buying up large amounts of the drug. In turn this will make it much harder to get the ingredient they need to make meths.

In Hesston in the USA they are trilling the scheme of tracking the sale of these type of drugs for illegal use.

They keep track of the amount of pseudoephedrine being sold to each consumer by scanning in their driving license before the sale of it. This keeps a database of how much is being sold to each individual. It also tells the chemist if the person is up to their limit on the amount of pseudoephedrine they can buy.

I feel this is a deterrent, but ultimately I do not think it will stop the sale of pseudoephedrine to criminals. They will find ways around it. For example, they could pay different people to go in and buy the pseudoephedrine. By having a network of people to do this for them they could get the quantity of pseudoephedrine needed for their meths manufacturing business.

I think that to really track the sale of this product you need to track everyone. The technology does exist to do this. Vehicles are tracked using GPS vehicle tracking systems. This technology can and is used to track people. For example, lone workers use it for safety reasons.

The problem with tracking everyone is that it is against human rights and personal privacy. This is a very big obstacle and not one that can be ignored. The only solution is to track everyone who has a record of taking or selling meths. Also anyone who has a record of purchasing pseudoephedrine for illegal uses. Criminals are already tracked by tagging for other crimes, so maybe it should be used for this type of crime as well.