Pubdate: Mon, 03 Jan 2005
Source: Brainerd Daily Dispatch (MN)
Copyright: 2005 The Brainerd Daily Dispatch
Contact:  http://www.brainerddispatch.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1110
Author: Matt Erickson, Staff Writer
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine)

COUNTY OPENS NEW FRONT IN WAR

Meth Ordinance Goes Into Effect

On Saturday, Crow Wing County's battle against methamphetamine was waged on 
a new front.

With the dawn of a new year, a county-wide ordinance went into effect 
mandating drugs used to make meth, called precursor drugs, be displayed and 
offered for sale behind a checkout counter, within a pharmacy or other 
controlled counter where the public is not permitted. Violation of the 
ordinance is a misdemeanor crime.

The meth precursors are drugs or products containing as its major active 
ingredient ephedrine, pseudoephedrine, phenylpropanolamine, or any of their 
salts or optical isomers. Products include Sudafed, Pharmacist Value 
Suphedrine, Mini-Thins, Max-Alert, and other diet pills or alert tablets 
often sold on the counters of convenience stores with any number of other 
chemicals, according to Crow Wing County's MethWatch Web site.

The idea behind the ordinance, said Lakes Area Drug Investigative Division 
officer Andy Galles, is to combat meth manufacturing at its source, the 
ingredients.

"It's going to have a huge effect for us, locally," Galles said. "It's 
going to take extreme workload off what we do. Without precursors, the 
pills, it makes it very hard for people to cook meth. You need that pill to 
make meth. You've got to have that pill."

Galles said several stores prior to the ordinance going into effect Jan. 1 
already had put such precursor drugs behind counters or in locked cases. He 
also noted that many stores had voluntarily put limits on the number of 
products a customer can buy in a day well before the ordinance passed.

"It really limits the amount of illegal purpose behind it. It's not 
stopping people with a cold from buying it," Galles said. "What we're 
deterring, our major goal, is to make sure these people aren't brazen 
enough to ask for four or five boxes."

Gordy Langness, an employee at the Holiday Station Store on Mill Avenue in 
Brainerd, said his convenience store has always kept ephedrine products 
behind the counter and limited the number a customer can purchase in a day 
to two.

"That way we can see who's buying and how much," Langness said. "They use 
it for different things: women for weight loss, guys to keep awake, and the 
legitimate use of it. Then there's the ones who are probably going to make 
it to make meth."

Langness said he knew of the new county-wide ordinance prohibiting the sale 
of precursors but wasn't aware when it was going into effect. He said as 
far as the sale of sinus medications like Sudafed, his store doesn't have a 
problem of people buying several boxes at a time.

The ordinance should have an effect on not just Crow Wing County, but area 
counties as well. Galles said people who come to the county to buy 
precursors are typically from other counties who buy here and take it back 
to their homes.

"It's going to have a trickle down effect in other areas," Galles said.

He also said Crow Wing County's adoption of an ordinance regulating the 
sale of precursors has received state-wide attention, and he is hopeful the 
state, as a few other states have done, passes legislation with similar 
intention in the upcoming session.

"We're definitely on forefront of what's going to be a domino effect," 
Galles said.
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MAP posted-by: Elizabeth Wehrman