Hands-Off Our Runny Nose: Meth & Cold Medicine Link

CNS News ^ | March 28, 2005 | Kerri Houston

[weekendwarrior]

Hands-Off Our Runny Noses By Kerri Houston CNSNews.com Commentary March 28, 2005

Good intentions by politicians have been known to inflict collateral damage on innocent bystanders as legislative overreach often causes problems for taxpayers, consumers or other subgroups of the citizenry.

Responding to a recent increase in methamphetamine use and production, the currently elected would like to legislate criminals out of business by passing laws that place common cold remedies out of the reach of non-criminal consumers.

Legislators, both state and federal, are fishing for the guilty in a sea of the innocent.

Meth is a highly addictive and dangerous substance whose manufacture and use places its addicts and the community in peril, and state and federal law enforcement have ramped up efforts to curtail production by successfully identifying and closing meth labs.

Approximately 80% of meth is produced by "super-labs" predominantly in California and along southern border states. Many are operated by Mexican criminal gangs whose extensive trafficking network supplies super-labs with ingredients needed to "cook" the meth.

But about 20% of meth is produced by small "Mom and Pop" labs found primarily in rural areas. Recipes are easy to find, and ingredients include common household items such as camping fuel, drain cleaner, and pseudophedrine (PSE), a decongestant in over-the-counter cold and allergy remedies. Although local and federal law enforcement and state legislatures have been aggressively targeting meth, federal legislators have now come at the problem with pencils drawn, and drafted the Senate and House Combat Meth Act of 2005.

[SweetCaroline]

camping fuel, drain cleaner, and pseudophedrine (PSE), ....I hear these are what eat away at the teeth.

[Protect the Bill of Rights]

As the mother of a son battling a meth addiction (doing well-still don't trust him as far as I can throw him), I am pissed every meth user in this country will find someone that cooks the stuff, while my head may explode from the f'n headache.

[Stellar Dendrite]

"The only drug that is a problem is pseudoephedrine, primarily in Sudafed and its generics. I have hay fever, and that stuff is totally worthless for treating it in my case"

Have you tried Nasalcrom?

[Quilla]

Prayers and best wishes for you and your son.

[ladtx]

Interesting. This is an excerpt of what was in yesterdays Dallas Morning News.

ATHENS, Texas; Meth horror stories are all too easy to find in Henderson County.

At the hospital, emergency room doctor Dan Bywaters is haunted by the abandoned toddler who vomited uncontrollably after eating methamphetamine.

At the jail, Sheriff J.R. "Ronny" Brownlow has scabby prisoners tell him to his face that they'll go back on meth the day they go free.

At the court building, state district Judge Carter Tarrance jokes about running a full-time meth court.

At Cedar Creek Lake, army retiree Al Gusner tells war stories about twitchy neighbors who rammed his car and held a knife to his throat for trying to chase meth users and labs from his neighborhood.

The drug known as "white-trash crack" has stalked the back roads of Henderson County, fueling child abuse, violence and misery for the last four years.

[JustRight]

"Have you tried Nasalcrom?"

Yep, no good for me. Since I went on Liptor, I've been better. Coincidence or not, I don't know.

[Stellar Dendrite]

A statin has cured your hayfever?? WTF!?

[lonevoice]

I hear ya. I can no longer find SineAid anywhere. It's the only non-prescription med that ever helped my occasional debilitating sinus headaches. I had no idea what had happened to SineAid until I learned it had pseudophedrine in it.

[Protect the Bill of Rights]

Thank you.

[Bones75]

Camping fuel and DRAIN cleaner!!! How hard up do you have to be to ingest that stuff.

Misleading. The truth is is that sodium hydroxide (lye, drain cleaner) is used in it's manufacture, as it is for many chemical processes and pharmaceuticals. Something that is used chemicaly to make something, doesn't necessarily mean that it's "in" there, if it has been chemical reacted to form something different. You wouldn't eat a spoonfull elemental sodium, right? You'd die. You wouldn't take a swig from a bottle of chlorine, would you? You die. Would you combine those two together and consume that? You do every day, because sodium chloride is table salt.

The drug itself is bad enough, but not because it "has drain cleaner in it"...

Bones

[timtoews5292004]

You'd be surprised. In my area you have to show ID when purchasing fuel injector cleaner and transmission conditioner. Apparently people huff the fumes and get high. I've been carded twice this month, thanks to the fact that my transmission is acting funny.

[ravingnutter]

You definitely have my sympathy and prayers...my daughter just moved to a halfway house a couple of weeks ago after intensive drug treatment. Prior to that, she was in prison for a year. She even burglarized my house for drug money.

[JustRight]

"A statin has cured your hayfever?? WTF!?"

As I said, it may be coincidence. Certainly hasn't cured it, but the last three summers the symptoms have been reduced to a level that I rarely need antihistamines unless I'm out mowing ragweed in the pasture.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

Thanks, but I'm stickin' with Sterno! ;)

Gawd! I can't believe people ingest this stuff! Ever seen photos of someone with "Meth Mouth?" Eewww! Call me vain, but I love my teeth too much, and have spent too much money on them to be an addict. *SHIVER*

As for banning stuff...it'll work just as well as anything else they've "banned" for the common good.

If Sudafed is outlawed, only Outlaws will have Sudafed. And they WILL find a way to get it. It'll just go underground. In fact, I'm sure some drug warlord is already pulling together a plan to keep the supply coming.

[Protect the Bill of Rights]

She even burglarized my house for drug money.

Been there, done that. It is devestating to watch your child self destruct. The road to the realization that you can do nothing to save him is a long one.

No matter what your brain tells you, your heart tells you something else. Best wishes and prayers for your daughter and the rest of your family. Meth can turn a home upside down like nothing else.

[DBrow]

Here is a bit of cold pill history, from 2000.

[blackdog]

So you saw those shadow people too huh? Quiet, shape shifting, but alway's lingering in your peripheral view. They become visible after the second 24 hour period of sleep deprivation.

I never enjoyed it, but man can one put away booze and go uneffected. It's been 20 years, but I feel ill at just the memory of the smell of the stuff. It really grips some folks as you mention. I was never one of them.

You've been blessed with renewed personal strength. Best to you!

[blackdog]

I had a cousin who had the gift of charm and brains but he just had to associate in the drug culture, it's people, and it's behaviors. His parents sent him everywhere they could for treatment. One of the problems with speed is that it tends to encourage it's users to engage in behaviors they would not do so in a state of clearer thinking. The body, mind, spirit, and soul never rests to find balance.

[Skooz]

Thanks.

It is a bizzare and wacky dream. No one who hasn't lived through it could understand.

My best friend from those days is in prison on meth charges. He just couldn't get away from it.

It literally took divine intervention to set me free of it.

Thanks to Jesus Christ, I have been free of meth (and other dope) for 20 years, this July.

[tomball]

Based on your article, you may find this interesting.    I almost gave this a thread all its own just because of the forced "big brother" tactics being used.   Addicts will be addicts, and criminals will be criminals.  It is much easier to infer an innocent man is a criminal than it is to go out,  hunt down, and catch a real criminal.  It is also more cost effective when legal compliance takes precedence over real police work.  Now your pharmacist has to be a cop, and the store clerk has to be the inventory police.  Rather than go after the illegals they are afraid of, these "Drug War" boys want to be sure all legitimate cold/allergy sufferers, manufacturers and drug stores are punished if they do not comply with their demands.

 

Methamphetamine lab legislation debuts at County Council

DOWNTOWN AKRON — The first step in the county’s battle against illegal drug manufacturing labs was taken this week with the introduction of legislation limiting the sale of cold medications such as Sudafed.

Summit County Council heard first reading of the legislation at its March 21 meeting. If passed, the ordinance would require that products containing pseudoephedrine and phenylpropanolamine be removed from the shelves of stores and pharmacies within the county and placed behind the counter. These components of many cold medications are the main ingredient used in the making of methamphetamine, a highly addictive stimulant manufactured in clandestine, portable labs.

If the legislation passes, customers who want to purchase cold medicines with these ingredients will have to request the medication from a sales clerk or pharmacist. The amount a customer can purchase will also be limited, to six grams, which is the equivalent of three packages, the amount the state of Ohio has also proposed in statewide legislation.

Stores that fail to comply with the legislation would be subject to a $100 fine per day of noncompliance, according to the proposed legislation. Those who sell more than the allowed amount could be fined up to $1,000, as would those who fail to report thefts of the products to authorities.

The legislation has been assigned to the Public Safety Committee and will be discussed during committee meetings April 4.