Posted on 12/09/2005 8:29:21 PM PST by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON – Cold remedies that can be used by drug dealers to make methamphetamine would be forced behind store counters under legislation Congress is poised to pass by year's end. Lawmakers hope that federal restrictions – included in the agreement reached Thursday to reauthorize the USA Patriot Act – will stem a meth trade that has hit rural America particularly hard.
A number of states have already moved to curb the sale of cold pills containing pseudoephedrine, the ingredient used to cook meth in makeshift labs. The federal law would prevent meth makers from moving to states with weaker laws.
Stores would be required to keep medicines like Sudafed and Nyquil behind the counter and consumers would be limited to 3.6 grams, or about 120 pills, per day and 9 grams, or about 300 pills, a month. Purchasers would also need to show a photo ID and sign a logbook.
Those limits target meth dealers who buy large quantities of the drugs to extract the pseudoephedrine.
The measure is a compromise reached after months of haggling over the 30-day limit. Sens. Jim Talent, R-Mo., and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who pushed the legislation in the Senate, insisted the limit was needed to curb the meth epidemic.
"The heart of this legislation is a strong standard for keeping pseudoephedrine products out of the hands of meth cooks," Feinstein said.
The bill is weaker than one passed by the Senate in September that would have required cold remedies to be sold from the pharmacy counter. That would have prevented many stores without pharmacies, such as convenience stores and some supermarkets, from carrying the pills.
"We're pleased to see the current compromise," said Tim Hammonds, president and CEO of the Food Marketing Institute, which represents grocery stores and other retailers. "It addresses a serious law enforcement concern, but in a way that balances the need for consumer access to safe and effective products."
Hammonds said he was disappointed the federal bill would not pre-empt more restrictive laws in states like Oklahoma and Iowa, where cold remedies are sold from behind pharmacy counters. At least 37 states have enacted laws to restrict the sale of cold medications to starve meth manufacturers of their key ingredient.
Many leading retailers – including Kmart, Walgreens, Target, Wal-Mart – have already adopted guidelines to limit customer access to cold products or to limit their sales.
Some drug makers have changed the ingredients in cold pills to take out pseudoephedrine and replace it with another substance, phenylephrine, that cannot be used to make meth. A new product called Sudafed PE, is already on store shelves, though the old Sudafed is still available.
The measure would provide nearly $100 million a year for five years to train state and local law enforcement to nab meth offenders and would expand funding to prosecute dealers and clean up environmentally toxic meth labs.
Talent called the measure "the toughest anti-meth bill ever considered by Congress." He predicted that it would help reduce the number of clandestine labs where the illegal drug is made with common items like household cleaners and coffee filters.
The meth problem is particularly severe in the Midwest, where rural areas provide cover for the pungent chemical odor from meth labs. In Missouri, law enforcement officers seized more than 2,700 meth labs last year – more than any other state.
Passage of the measure could take place as early as next week, when Republican leaders press for a vote on the anti-terrorism bill. Some opponents who claim Patriot Act threatens civil liberties are threatening a filibuster unless changes are made.
Great...treating more and more people like criminals. Just because we get a runny nose.
This is bullshit.
And I rarely use Nyquil, and never used Sudafed.
Oh yeah, because pseudoephedrine and meth would NEVER get smuggled in from Mexico in response to this law. /sarcasm
As if we didn't have enough scum bringing illegal products over the border, now we have more incentive for illegals to cross the border, and I get to go jump through hoops when I have allergy or sinus problems or just a cold that is hitting all five members of my family simultaneously.
Another example of ordinary people - who would like to buy their cold tablets - being inconvenienced. I used to stock up on tablets when I went to the chemist - I don't like shopping all the time - but if you do that now they look at you oddly, and soon it will be illegal to have a convenient box of cold tablets, some asparin, some iron suppliments etc. They will be doled out one by one.
It's not enough the Republican Party has stolen and spent more every year than the 'Rats ever did; now they insist on treating us like children. "Party of limited government" my ass. Screw them.
Big Stupid Government gets pretty damn stupider by the day. As do, apparently, the people who vote for these morons.
Meth doesn't get smuggled. That's why it's cheap. They're making it in Motel rooms, campers, sheds, barns, trailers, etc. They busted a rolling meth lab a few miles away from here. It's a real problem in the Heartland
It'll work as good as banning guns works in reducing crime. Idiots.
I believe this is a desperate response to the mad pathologies of the criminal justice system - can't fight them in courts, so we'll fight them in drugstores.
The WOT joins the WOD. I feel so much safer.
Yeah it does and so do the ingredients in bulk.
See link below from which I've excerpted:
"They don't need to risk their lives by doing something that is potentially explosive. And they don't need to risk long jail terms by getting caught cooking meth, because the price is low enough now so you can have it without cooking it," Durkin said.
Crystal meth
Homemade meth has always made up a small amount of the drug here in Minnesota, somewhere between 10 and 20 percent. Although cops tell Durkin less meth is now being made in Minnesota, the use of the drug hasn't slowed.
"That's a whole different category, and we haven't heard any of those people express a belief that the number of the users of the drug has gone down," said Durkin. "In fact we know that supplies are up, and believe that meth use is a growing problem, and not a declining problem in Minnesota."
National data shows the number of meth users is starting to level off. But Durkin says the number of users now considered addicted to the drug has increased dramatically.
She's encouraged by the fight that Minnesota law enforcement officials and communities are putting up against meth.
Minnesota's legislation may keep people from making meth, but it won't stop people from using meth. She says the only way to do that is to treat people who are addicted, and educate everyone else on the dangers of meth.
There is a drug that destroys lives that is rampant in D.C. that the politicans need to be forced to go cold turkey on, it's called "power of other people".
Perhaps so, cause we've had these laws in IN for a year now, and it just seems to keep growing.
Makes no dif to me, I don't take any of those things anyway. Lawmakers are reacting to the screams of constituents who want something done. Maybe this ain't it, but what is?
I stand corrected, but around here, I know for a fact, that our jails are full of guys caught cooking. repeatedly
A big problem here was anhydrous ammonia theft. I don't know what kept a lot of them from killing themselves with just the ingredients.
Au contraire...
http://www.usdoj.gov/ndic/pubs11/13846/meth.htm
Methamphetamine production appears to have increased sharply in Mexico since 2002. Mexican criminal groups are able to acquire bulk quantities of pseudoephedrine and ephedrine from China and other countries for use in Mexico-based laboratories.
Methamphetamine smuggling from Mexico into the United States via Arizona appears to have increased sharply since 2001. More methamphetamine was seized at or between POEs in Arizona in 2003 than at or between POEs in California or Texas.
Somebody I am very close to was formerly a very big user of meth (and was introduced to it by his MOTHER.) I am not sure what the answer is to the problem but banning cold medicine for the rest of us won't help stop the problem and introduces new problems by increasing illegal flows over the border. The tweakers still get high either way. It's been a problem here in the Northwest for at least 12 years (that I have known regular users.) I lost a lot of friends to it in my late teens.
Sorry for the late posting of repeat info!
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