Dealing with Meth

thehim has an excellent discussion going on about meth over at Blog Reload (Part one and Part two).
The discussion centers around the role of meth in crime and the extent to which the crackdown on local meth production has increased crime levels (in part due to the fact that eliminating local labs brings in organized criminals to take on the supply role, and that can result in increased violent crime).
I pretty much agree with thehim’s conclusions in part two, although I’m actually a little less pessimistic regarding the challenges of dealing with meth in a legalization model. To a large extent, I believe that a proper legalization and regulation approach to all drugs will cause meth to mostly go away. The availability of regulated “clean” amphetamines will dramatically reduce the demand for meth. There will be some hard-core users who will need some treatment or maintenance programs, and the problem will be greater than it would have been had we not gone down this path in the first place, but meth (as we know it today), will eventually disappear just like the backyard moonshine still.