The British firm that makes Cillit Bang cleaners, Dettol disinfectant and Durex condoms is fighting hard against laws designed to stop the spread of crystal meth in the United States.

Slough-based multinational Reckitt Benckiser has joined with US drug firms in a state-by-state battle against anti-drug laws.

We are used to stories about big US firms trying to bully and bribe British politicians. But I want to fill Morning Star readers with a warm, patriotic feeling by showing you that British firms take their turn bullying our US friends as well.

Reckitt Benckiser is not a household name, although its goods are very likely to be found in your household.

The firm started off making Coleman's mustard in the 19th century.

It has since sold off the mustard and diversified into cleaning products and other consumer goods. It also has a powerful pharmaceutical arm.

All this adds up to big business. It has 39,000 staff generating a £9 billion a year turnover from its headquarters in glamorous Slough.

That business extends to the US, where its products include a cold and flu medicine called Mucinex. It is this drug that's taken the firm into the world of meth-heads.

A new crude "shake-and-bake" method of mixing up crystal meth is replacing the kind of expensive underground laboratory production of the drug dramatised in the TV show Breaking Bad.

Drug users across the US now typically make the drug by mixing some household chemicals in a two-litre soda bottle. The key chemical in this "one-pot" method is pseudoephedrine, an ingredient of popular cold and allergy medicines like Reckitt Benckiser's Mucinex.

In 2005 Congress passed the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act, limiting the amount of pseudoephedrine available in one over-the-counter purchase.

However by using multiple buyers purchasing drugs like Mucinex in multiple stores - a process known as "smurfing" - and by using the smaller batch "shake-and-bake" method, drug users get round the Act.

State senators in regions where crystal meth is a particular problem, especially the southern US, proposed more restrictions on pseudoephedrine sales.

The horrible effects of crystal meth - the crime, the families destroyed, the violence - encouraged senators across the south to back new laws.

But they have been blocked by a powerful, big-money big pharma lobby whose active members include Britain's Reckitt Benckiser.

In 2010 and 2011 Kentucky state senators introduced laws to make pseudoephedrine medicines prescription-only.

A big pharma lobby group, the Consumer Healthcare Products Association (CHPA), stepped in.

The CHPA is funded by companies including Reckitt Benckiser.  

It launched a "Stop meth not meds" website, arguing pseudoephedrine drugs should not become prescription-only, as this would hurt consumers without stopping crystal meth.

The CHPA's publicity campaign highlighted Reckitt Benckiser's Mucinex as one of the popular medicines that would be hit by anti-crystal meth laws.

The pharma firms hired top state lobbyists and paid over $1 million for "robo-calls."

Their lobbying firm made thousands and thousands of automated calls to Kentuckians telling them to oppose the measure.

The lobbying, the biggest campaign in Kentucky for years, stopped the anti-drug measure becoming law.

This pattern has been repeated in over 17 US states in the past couple of years.

State senators and law-enforcement officials backed the laws, prompted by the spread of crystal meth, by the death of police officers in meth-related incidents and by injuries sustained by users of the "shake-and-bake" method.

The crude handheld mix is effective, but often bursts into flames, injuring addicts and their children. 

However, only Mississippi and Oregon passed pseudoephedrine prescription laws, as the CHPA lobby, with financial and political support from Slough's finest, beat back initiatives everywhere else.

Reckitt Benckiser's spokesperson told me that "upscheduling" pseudoephedrine to prescription-only status is "ineffective and financially a burden those who depend on these medicines for relief with unnecessary and costly visits to the doctor."

The Slough-based firm thinks it knows better than elected US politicians struggling with the crystal meth problem. Reckitt Benckiser's spokesperson claimed that "the one state that did upschedule it, Oregon, has not found it an effective solution to the issue."

But they were wrong on the basic facts. Because actually two states, not one, "upscheduled" and the evidence is that this did help.  

Mississippi and Oregon "upscheduled" and according to a 2013 study by the General Accounting Office - the US equivalent of our National Audit Office - "The implementation of prescription-only laws by Oregon and Mississippi was followed by declines in lab incidents."

Law-enforcement officials "attribute this reduction in large part to the prescription-only approach."

The involvement of a Slough-based former mustard-maker in lobbying against US anti-drug laws seems, frankly, pretty odd.

But things are often strange in the world of big pharma. There are huge profits to be made in medicine-making, so pharma firms are often tempted to put profit before health. And Britain still has a powerful pharmaceutical industry.

So these kinds of contradictions are not at all uncommon.

Other companies, like GlaxoSmithKline, are probably better known for their bad behaviour, but Reckitt Benckiser is also a player.

Consider, for example, that one of the firm's main profit-makers was a drug called Suboxone.

It is used to treat heroin addicts. So the firm makes a profit from the "war on drugs" in one area while it tries to stop regulation aimed at cutting illegal drug use in another.

Although Reckitt Benckiser's adventures in the US seem pretty extraordinary, it also seems capable of doing the wrong thing at home.

In 2010 Reckitt Benckiser was fined £10 million by the Competition Commission because the firm tried to limit competition in the market for heartburn medicines. According to the headlines, it was fined for "Gaviscon abuse."

Reckitt Benckiser makes Gaviscon but manipulated supply to force the NHS to use the more expensive "Gaviscon Advanced."

The NHS is now suing the firm for an extra £90m to make up for the extra Gaviscon money it fiddled out of the health service.