News-Record.com

Your editorial, "A growing menace" (Feb. 23), about the methamphetamine scourge, rings all too familiar to me. As chief legal counsel for Oklahoma's State Bureau of Narcotics, I helped draft and worked to pass our new controls on tablet-form pseudoephedrine last year. The results of that law have been immediate, dramatic and life-saving.

However, unlike you, I do not see it as a flaw in our law that it forces meth cooks to neighboring states. On the contrary, I think it is a testament to this law's effectiveness that it forces those criminals to scoot just beyond its reach, and is merely evidence that other states that receive these offenders should pass similar laws.

It is impossible to quantify, but I am sure that because of our new law, at least one child who might have otherwise been exposed to meth wasn't; at least one family that might have been decimated by this drug wasn't; at least one adult who might be dead from the drug isn't. Whatever the inconvenience of having to use gel caps or buy from a pharmacy, I remain forever convinced it is well worth the trade.

Scott Rowland
Oklahoma City, Okla.