Pubdate: Thu, 14 Apr 2005
Source: News Tribune, The (Tacoma, WA)
Copyright: 2005 Tacoma News Inc.
Contact:  http://www.tribnet.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/442

NO EXCUSES GOOD ENOUGH TO WEAKEN METH FIGHT

Pity the retailers and pharmaceutical companies that are seeking to
keep cold and allergy medications used to make methamphetamine on the
shelf. Their case just gets weaker by the day. So do senators' excuses
for watering down House-passed legislation that originally would have
placed all cold tablets containing pseudoephedrine behind store and
pharmacy counters.

The bill's critics say they are fine with further restrictions on
medications like Sudafed in which pseudoephedrine is the sole active
ingredient. What they oppose are more barriers on sales of medications
like Claritin that mix pseudoephedrine with other active ingredients
like pain killers. They say meth cooks don't like that form of the
drug.

Wrong, says the Drug Enforcement Administration.

=93Nothing could be further from the truth,=94 William Grant of the DEA's
Public Affairs Section in Washington, D.C., said in a recent letter to
a drug company. =93The presence of other `additives' in the finished
product is not an issue for methamphetamine dealers or users.
Methamphetamine cooks are not quality conscious...=94

Not only are meth makers not concerned a whit with purity, they also
have no trouble extracting pseudoephedrine from mixed-ingredient
medications. The Pierce County Sheriff's Office, which has been at the
forefront of fighting the meth scourge, reports that 60 percent of the
labs it finds use pseudoephedrine extracted from mixed-ingredient
medications.

Opponents counter that putting all pseudoephedrine products behind the
counter will be a burden on grocers and inconvenience innocent
consumers. Tell that to Fred Meyer, which is voluntarily removing the
products from shelves. And those few consumers who are really put out
by having to ask for cold tablets now have alternatives. In January,
Pfizer released a reformulated Sudafed that doesn't contain
pseudoephedrine. Other drug companies likely will follow its lead as
more and more states adopt restrictions on the sale of pseudoephedrine
products.

Those are the best arguments that critics offer; the excuses only get
sillier from there. Take the testimony before the Senate Judiciary
Committee in which opponents argued that Washington already regulates
these drugs more than other states and the laws it has are working.

Come again? Washington is by no means ahead of the curve. It, like a
lot of other states, is playing catchup to places where restrictions
on pseudoephedrine have resulted in dramatic decreases in meth lab
seizures.

Even the House bill, HB 2266, wouldn't put the state on the cutting
edge. Oklahoma, for example, classifies pseudoephedrine and similar
compounds as controlled substances and requires that sales of
medications containing them go through a pharmacist. It also applies
the regulations not only to pills, but also to liquid and gel-cap
medications -- which meth cooks are just now starting to use.

As for how the state's laws can be considered successful when
Washington is still battling a $50 million problem that destroys not
just users but families, communities and the environment, we haven't a
clue.

This is not some pesky problem that lawmakers are seeking to regulate
away. It is an epidemic worthy of our best efforts. The bill before
the Senate is a weak attempt to wiggle around that
responsibility.
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MAP posted-by: SHeath(DPFFLorida)