When I first moved to Philadelphia, one of my most memorable experiences was running into a gentleman on Passyunk Avenue who asked if I was interested in buying any steaks from him. Inside his backpack, of course, were about seven or eight good-quality (sirloin, porterhouse) steaks from the local Acme. During my first week living in Philadelphia, I didn’t think much of it; the unusually rapid-speaking, manic-seeming street steak vendor just seemed to be another charmer in a long line of entrepreneurial-minded South Philadelphia drug addicts. But as any supermarket employee can tell you, meat is the most frequently shoplifted item from America’s grocery stores. How did this come to be? Slate’s Brendan Koerner thinks it all has to do with the methamphetamine crisis. Thanks to new laws that require stores to place medicines containing pseudoephedrine (a common cold medicine ingredient that is also used in the manufacture of metamphetamines) behind the counter, meats are now the supermarket item with the highest resale value:
Meat’s dubious triumph is due in part to a law enforcement crackdown on methamphetamine use. Meat used to be the shoplifting runner-up to health-and-beauty-care items, a category that includes cough medicines containing pseudoephedrine, a key ingredient in home-cooked meth. In 2003, for example, a quarter of shoplifted products were HBCs, while meat took second place at 16 percent. But states began passing laws that require stores to move medicines containing pseudoephedrine behind secure counters. That was enough to cut the pinching of HBCs, which fell by 11 percent between 2003 and 2005.
When I first moved to Philadelphia, one of my most memorable experiences was running into a gentleman on Passyunk Avenue who asked if I was interested in buying any steaks from him. Inside his backpack, of course, were about seven or eight good-quality (sirloin, porterhouse) steaks from the local Acme. During my first week living in Philadelphia, I didn’t think much of it; the unusually rapid-speaking, manic-seeming street steak vendor just seemed to be another charmer in a long line of entrepreneurial-minded South Philadelphia drug addicts. But as any supermarket employee can tell you, meat is the most frequently shoplifted item from America’s grocery stores. How did this come to be? Slate’s Brendan Koerner thinks it all has to do with the methamphetamine crisis. Thanks to new laws that require stores to place medicines containing pseudoephedrine (a common cold medicine ingredient that is also used in the manufacture of metamphetamines) behind the counter, meats are now the supermarket item with the highest resale value:
