Hide Your Ammonia
 

From the Quad-City Times:

"DES MOINES - More than 4,400 hardened steel locks for anhydrous ammonia tanks will be distributed in 18 counties in south-central Iowa to help stem the manufacture of methamphetamine.

The 6-by-4-inch lock covers the tank valve.

"They're supposed to be pretty much indestructable to get into," said Jerry Nelson, an agent with the Iowa Division of Narcotics Enforcement.

Thieves frequently siphon off ammonia from the fertilizer tanks to make methamphetamine, a highly addictive stimulant that also includes such ingredients as drain cleaner and decongestant tablets.

Authorities uncovered a record 764 meth labs in Iowa last year and seized 161 pounds of the drug, double what they found in 2000. The tank locks, opened with a key, were unveiled Friday at Farmers Elevator Co., a farmer-owned co-op in Bondurant, about 15 miles northeast of Des Moines."

Prohibition (your tax dollars) at work...

Meth is some real heavy shit, but I personally am a Libertarian and feel that we should stop wasting money on this "war" on drugs.

If people want to do drugs, let them! It's not like making them illegal is going to stop them.

Furthermore those idiots in politics claims that drugs are helping fund terrorism. Well if you guys didn't make it illegal in the first place, causing prices to get jacked up, it wouldn't be POTENTIALLY used to fund terrorism.

What's happening in Iowa is sad. My relatives live near a town called Red Oak. It used to be a pretty, quaint little town. Now, half the buildings are borded up and the locals call it Meth Oak.

Well said.:thumbsup

Like the domino principle/cause and effect/ the ripple effect!

Exactamundo. Who do we have to thank for the (dis)organized crime-slash-terrorist funds? Why our very own government! Fucking Fundamentalists.

i don't understand how applying an anti-theft device to ammonia tanks is oppressive? it's not like anyone is demanding two forms of ID to purchase a bottle of cleaning liquid. it seems to me the owners of the tanks are preventing theft of thier property and helping to prevent illegal drug production as a result.

is there something i'm missing? will this prevent the use of ammonia by the appropriate operators or something?

they'll just get it somewhere else
hell you can buy on ebay for gods sake

You're right. What the hell was I thinking when I posted this?

I just thought it was an interesting story. And I think if we start looking drug addiction problems as medical instead of criminal, we might see some real progress on the war on drugs.

But we don't, so we have to resort to this. I'm not saying it is oppressive. It's just too bad that it has to be done.