Meds hindering meth war
Cooks still getting ingredient; push on for Rx-only law
Indiana last week modified its law restricting a popular cold medication often used to make methamphetamine.
It’s the first change to a law that has not drastically reduced the number of meth labs since taking effect several years ago.
But there’s a growing movement that believes the only step that will make a difference is making it even harder to buy pseudoephedrine – by requiring a doctor’s prescription.
Meth is a highly addictive stimulant that can be homemade by brewing various toxic chemicals in a volatile reaction. In recent years, meth cooks have refined their methods, making the drug in small batches in plastic bottles instead of the traditional lab.
A main ingredient is pseudoephedrine, a popular, legal decongestant sold by itself or often contained in antihistamines such as Claritin D, Zyrtec D and generic equivalents. Instead of 3 grams a week, consumers can now buy 3.6 grams a day.
Northeast Indiana remains a haven for meth labs. More than 1,300 were seized last year, the most ever in the state and a jump of nearly 25 percent from the year before.
Led by Elkhart, five northeast Indiana counties ranked in the state’s top 10 for number of labs seized, according to Indiana State Police. One was Noble County, which for years led the state in lab seizures.
Noble’s west-central Indiana counterpart and top competitor for that notorious distinction was Vigo County, which again ranked in the top 10 but saw a marked decline from several years earlier.
Vigo law enforcement officers hope another change will continue to make a dent, and it’s a change they hope other counties will consider. On July 1, the same day the state modified its law, a couple of pharmacies in the county seat of Terre Haute began requiring prescriptions before dispensing pseudoephedrine.
The change came at the request of local law enforcement, said Sgt. Chris Gallagher of the Terre Haute Police Department.
Over the past 15 years, Gallagher has seen the toll meth has taken on his community: babies born addicted to meth, as many as 10 a month during the worst period; frequent high-speed police chases, which used to be a rarity; parents killing their own children.
The latter happened twice in the past decade; both times, the crimes involved meth, Gallagher said.
“There’s almost not a single aspect of society that this doesn’t have a profound influence on,” he said.
Voluntary effort
So, in May, law enforcement officers in Vigo asked local pharmacies to consider dispensing pseudoephedrine by prescription only.
“It’s obvious to anybody and everybody who’s involved in this that this is the only way to solve the problem,” Gallagher said.
Gallagher points to Oregon as the example of prescription-only pseudoephedrine’s success.
While Oregon’s meth problem hasn’t been as large as Indiana’s in recent years, it was still significant. In 2006, Oregon made pseudoephedrine a prescription drug, as it had been before 1976.
The results have been substantial, according to the Oregon Alliance for Drug Endangered Children, which advocated for the change. The organization said “smurfing” – traveling from pharmacy to pharmacy to buy as much pseudoephedrine as possible – has been eliminated in Oregon, and meth labs have nearly been eliminated, too.
The alliance said from November 2006 to November 2008, there was a 31 percent drop in drug arrests in Oregon, nearly all of that decline meth-related.
Following Oregon’s lead, Mississippi passed a similar law this year, and similar proposals have been offered around the country.
Barring a state law, law enforcement officers in Vigo County could only ask pharmacies to voluntarily make the change. But they asked pharmacies that are participating to begin doing so July 1 – a symbolic move because that’s when new laws in Indiana often take effect, Gallagher said.
Family-owned pharmacies were quick to jump on board, but Gallagher said most corporate pharmacies declined, although negotiations continue.
A Wal-Mart spokeswoman said the company will continue making pseudoephedrine available without a prescription unless the law prohibits it.
Indiana had long discussed tracking pseudoephedrine sales in a statewide database. Other states have tried tracking as well, but Gallagher said he doesn’t see it as a solution to the problem.
“Tracking is nothing more than reactionary,” he said. “It is nothing more than a record of our failures.”
Stanley Salyards, president of the Kentucky Narcotics Officers Association, agrees that tracking is reactive, not proactive.
“We don’t want to find more meth labs,” he said. “We want to significantly reduce meth labs, and the only way to do that is to schedule pseudoephedrine.”
Salyards was at the forefront of a recent battle in Kentucky to get a prescription-only bill passed and plans to continue the fight. He hopes Indiana will consider it – possibly creating a domino effect in the Midwest – but he warns of heavy resistance from the pharmaceutical industry.
“It should be attacked on the federal level,” he said. “But it won’t be.”
The pharmaceutical industry has advocated sales tracking as a viable alternative to making pseudoephedrine prescription-only, even financially backing such systems in many states, according to Stateline.org.
Drugmakers resist
In Kentucky, drugmakers came out swinging this spring against a proposal to require a prescription.
The Consumer Healthcare Products Association – a trade association representing Sudafed maker Johnson & Johnson and other major over-the-counter drugmakers – spent more than $311,000 in the last month of Kentucky’s legislative session fighting the bill, according to the Kentucky Legislative Ethics Commission. That investment dominated lobbying spending this spring, according to the commission.
It’s small money compared with what drug companies make on sales of over-the-counter cold medicine. The Consumer Healthcare Products Association said cough and cold medicines represent the biggest portion of over-the-counter sales – nearly $4.2 billion last year, excluding Wal-Mart.
The trade association issued a statement in February when Mississippi voted to require a prescription for pseudoephedrine, saying the bill was “well-intentioned” but an “unnecessary burden.” The association said states will lose sales tax revenue and will increase health care costs as people seek doctor’s appointments for prescriptions.
Terre Haute’s Gallagher doesn’t buy those arguments. He believes doctors will be lenient about phoning in prescriptions for patients with known allergies and that the cost to health care won’t be great.
And that doesn’t take into account the massive amount of money the state already spends cleaning up meth labs, or the money counties spend housing people for meth-related crimes and providing health care to addicted inmates.
But he realizes he has a dog in this fight, so he’s seeking help from Indiana State University to come up with a study on the benefits of restricting pseudoephedrine.
“We’re going to have to combat the lobbyists with statistics and facts,” he said.
First Sgt. Dave Bursten, Indiana State Police spokesman, said his agency isn’t taking a position on whether the state should consider restricting the drug.
A legislative summer study committee has been organized to explore the issue, he said.
