The
upshot of the policy outlined in the article posted by
Mat Catastrophe is that Walmart does indeed limit the sale of its
Equate brand pseudoephedrine to 2-per-customer in the larger boxes, and
Costco limits the sale of its generic
Kirkland pseudoephedrine to 1-per-customer in its three-pack large box.
Costco also maintains a
database of
pseudoephedrine buyers, which is an easy task given that you must present a member's card upon checkout.
Walmart, however, continues to profit from this arrangement; as hobbyist methamphetamine producers are quite aware of what purchases will result in a flag, they know to buy no more than two at a time, pay in cash, and always buy something else along with the pseudoephedrine. Clearly, this is a win-win situation for Walmart, which gets to comply with the DEA regulations and still profit from the high demand for methamphetamine.
It's also worth noting that Walmart's exceedingly cheap generic brand is without a doubt the most inexpensive means of procuring pseudoephedrine without either raising suspicions of intent to manufacture, or shoplifting. This latter option is becoming more rampant; on any given day, a trip to the pharmacy section of your local drugstore is likely to reveal empty boxes of Sudafed and otherwise depleted inventory.
The DEA's likely next step is to require that pseudoephedrine be sold strictly over-the-counter, and only to those that show photographic ID. In turn, methamphetamine producers will need to resort to more dangerous and potentially violent situations to obtain the desired precursors, as the demand for methamphetamine is unlikely to decrease any time soon. In fact, the main result of the DEA's actions has only been to increase the street value of the drug.