FORT WAYNE – Until he received an email about it being sold in a convenience store in downtown Fort Wayne, Master Trooper Andy Smith of the Indiana State Police had never heard of EPHED 60.
Now it’s on his radar.
A 2-ounce shot of liquid nasal decongestant, EPHED 60 is made by a Noblesville company and contains pseudoephedrine, a key ingredient in the manufacture of methamphetamine. It can also be bought one bottle at a time without requiring a buyer to register on statewide logs that track ephedrine and pseudoephedrine purchases.
Smith works at the state police’s Fort Wayne post and is a member of the Meth Suppression Section. He can’t say for sure whether the pseudoephedrine in EPHED 60 can be extracted to make methamphetamine – someone would have to have a gallon of it, at least, he said.
But he wouldn’t be surprised if someone found a way to do just that.
A representative for the company that makes EPHED 60 said in an email that the quantity of pseudoephedrine in the product is so small that it would be “difficult, if not impossible or impractical” for someone to do so.
A product like EPHED 60, whether it can be used to make methamphetamine or not, highlights one of the many obstacles police deal with when it comes to the drug: Methods to make it can change or be refined, with people using different products or novel ways to cook up their high.
“They’re always going to find something,” Smith said.
Recipes for meth
At first, in the 1990s, a typical methamphetamine user would make the drug with anhydrous ammonia.
Used as a fertilizer, anhydrous ammonia is often found on farms, and thus methamphetamine became known as a rural drug. The fertilizer is toxic in high concentrations and gives off a distinctive smell. And it adds danger to the process of making methamphetamine, leading to explosions and fires.
In recent years, though, police have seen the rise of the one-pot or shake-and-bake method. In this method, which is less toxic because of the absence of anhydrous ammonia, a meth user combines ingredients in a small plastic bottle to create the needed chemical reaction to make the drug.
It’s also led to more meth labs being found in urban areas.
One critical meth-making ingredient that also is common in medication is pseudoephedrine, typically sold in pill form, which Smith said needs to be converted to liquid.
That’s why EPHED 60 causes him concern.
“I personally think that, since it’s already in a liquid state, it just cuts out one step for them,” he said.
Smith also said that his boss in the meth suppression unit does not believe the product can be used to make meth. The sugar and water in the product would make it too difficult to extract the pseudoephedrine or that the pseudoephedrine would be too diluted to be of use.
That’s why they, along with a chemist, will eventually test the product for themselves by trying to make methamphetamine out of it in a lab setting, Smith said.
It’s something Smith’s unit often does, many times out of necessity.
If there are new recipes, or new products on the market that may contribute to methamphetamine use, the unit must prove in court that they can be used to make the drug. So members go to the lab and many times videotape the “cooking” procedures.
David Riddle, the compliance officer for DMD Pharmaceuticals, which makes EPHED 60, wrote in an email that the product was developed about a year ago to be sold in states where tablet forms of pseudoephedrine were required to be sold in pharmacies only.
“An exemption was made in many of these states not requiring this over the counter medicine to only be sold in a pharmacy if it was in liquid form, with the belief that these products were harder or less likely to be diverted for illegal use,” Riddle wrote.
He also wrote that the product, which contains 60 milligrams of pseudoephedrine, is the equivalent of one tablet, or one dose, of the leading nasal decongestant as required by the Food and Drug Administration. Only about 0.12 percent of the liquid in the bottle is pseudoephedrine, according to his email.
“Because one bottle contains about 97 percent filtered water plus various flavors and other inactive ingredients added, this leaves a very small amount of active ingredient,” Riddle wrote.
While Smith acknowledges that it would require many bottles of the product to make enough meth for one or two people, he said many people addicted to the drug will do anything they can to procure enough ingredients to make more of the drug.
Currently in Indiana, consumers can buy 3.6 grams of ephedrine or pseudoephedrine per day and 9 grams every 30 days.
Products sold in “convenience packages,” which are defined as products containing no more than 120 milligrams of ephedrine or pseudoephedrine, do not require a buyer to register in the statewide logs, according to Indiana law.
A state law set to take effect July 1 cuts the amount of ephedrine or pseudoephedrine in a convenience package to 60 milligrams.
On EPHED 60’s packaging, it says that only one bottle can be bought at a time. At Berger’s II, a convenience store at 1450 St. Joseph Blvd. where it is sold, signs tell customers they can buy one per transaction without registering in the logs.
Smith, though, has seen what people will go through just to get the materials to make meth. He said many meth users will pay someone up to $100 over the price of a box of medicine containing pseudoephedrine to buy that medication for them, so as to keep their names off the logs.
On the lookout
So far, few people seem to have heard of EPHED 60.
At Berger’s II, the medicine is sold at the front counter with bottled energy products, such as the popular 5-Hour Energy shot. Raad Jabarr, an employee at the store, said he sells maybe one or two bottles of EPHED 60 a week, if that.
Sgt. Chad Smith, a spokesman for the Kosciusko County Sheriff’s Department, which deals with meth regularly, said officers there had heard about a liquid pseudoephedrine but had not seen it or heard about it being used to make methamphetamine.
Lt. Mike Vaughn, head of the Allen County Sheriff’s vice and narcotics division, had not heard of EPHED 60 either.
Smith said it’s always good to be on the lookout for products such as EPHED 60.
There are other ingredients people are reportedly using across the country to manufacture methamphetamine, ones he did not want to discuss publicly.
But if he didn’t know about EPHED 60, Smith said he might not notice it if he came across one of the small bottles at a meth scene.
“It might have been something I overlooked,” he said. “I might’ve thought it was just one of those energy products.”
