|
|
|
 Health & Beauty | On Addiction | January 2005 
In US, States May Restrict Cold Pills With Ingredient in Meth
 Fox Butterfield - NYTimes
Faced with a growing crisis of methamphetamine addiction and toxic spills from homemade drug laboratories, 20 US states are considering legislation that would impose tight restrictions on common cold medicines that contain pseudoephedrine, an essential ingredient in making methamphetamine.
 Although the bills vary in detail, most would classify pseudoephedrine as a controlled substance and would allow sales of products containing it, like Sudafed, only in pharmacies, not in grocery or convenience stores. Customers would have to purchase the medicine from a pharmacist, show photo identification and sign a logbook.
The state bills, and similar ones introduced in both houses of Congress this week, are expected to be opposed by groups representing drug, grocery and convenience stores.
The growing legislative interest in restricting sales of cold medicines, experts say, is a response to the rapid spread of methamphetamine from its origins in the rural West to become the No. 1 priority for law enforcement in many states in the Midwest and Southeast.
In the past year or so, methamphetamine has begun to move into some urban and suburban areas. And in Minneapolis and St. Paul, high school students have become addicted in significant numbers, one of the first such cases in the country.
"In Minnesota, meth is now breaking all the rules about how the drug spreads," said Deborah Durkin, coordinator of the methamphetamine program in the Minnesota Department of Health. "Meth is no longer a rural health problem here; it is a statewide public health crisis, with 70 to 80 percent of the people in jail for meth-related crimes and large numbers of high school kids becoming addicted."
Another motivation for passing such laws is concern that makers of methamphetamine will flock to states that do not pass restrictions.
"If we don't have a strong restriction on pseudoephedrine in Minnesota, I fear we'll become the dumping ground for every meth head in the United States, as cooks cross state borders to find the laxest regulations," said Julie Rosen, a Republican state senator who is a sponsor of a methamphetamine bill here.
While 80 percent of the nation's methamphetamine supply is smuggled into the United States from Mexico or churned out in so-called superlabs in the Central Valley of California, the rest is produced in small home laboratories or even in the trunks of cars. These home laboratories create a huge problem for law enforcement because they leave toxic waste that must be cleaned up and often expose children to poisonous chemicals.
Nate, a 17-year-old high school senior here, said in an interview this week that he would often buy multiple packages of Sudafed at Wal-Mart and then turn them over to a neighbor who cooked the drug in a bathroom laboratory. In return, the dealer shared the finished product with him.
Nate is a student at Sobriety High, a charter school in Maplewood, Minn., set up to educate and treat students with addictions, mostly methamphetamine problems. He said he began using the drug when he was 13, the summer before his freshman year. "I was hanging out with my friends' older siblings, and one was a dealer, and he just brought out some meth," Nate said.
Nate, who because he is in high school under state law could be interviewed only on the condition that his surname not be published, said he was addicted from his first day. "Meth gave me a sense of belonging and feeling really cool," he said.
Later, to get his supply, Nate stole money from his parents or took teenage girls he knew to his dealer.
Another senior at Sobriety High, Megan, 18, said she first tried methamphetamine when she was 13 and in the seventh grade. "I was with a girlfriend and her older brother, and I liked meth so much I knew I'd do it again and again," she said.
At first, Megan said, she was able to obtain more of the drug from her friends free. But soon, she said, "My dealer asked me to do things with him, and other men, and girls."
Like many female methamphetamine addicts, Megan became a prostitute. She cried at the memory.
She also began stealing from her parents, including taking $5,000 her father had saved for a present for her grandfather.
A major question about the new bills is how effective opposition from the pharmaceutical industry and grocery and drug store trade associations will be. In past years, lobbying by these groups has largely succeeded in stopping efforts to restrict sales of pseudoephedrine products.
Last year, for example, Iowa, one of the states hardest hit by methamphetamine, was unable to pass a bill that would have made pseudoephedrine a controlled substance, or Schedule 5 drug, like cough syrup with codeine, that could be sold only in pharmacies from behind the counter.
"All the lobbying by the Consumer Healthcare Products Association and by Pfizer gave us a really watered-down bill," said Marvin Van Haaften, the director of the Iowa governor's Office of Drug Control Policy. Pfizer is the manufacturer of Sudafed.
The only state that has passed a law making pseudoephedrine a Schedule 5 drug is Oklahoma. There, the legislature unanimously approved the bill last April after three Oklahoma state troopers were shot dead by methamphetamine cooks. Since the law's passage, seizures of laboratories in Oklahoma have fallen 81 percent, said Mark Woodward, a spokesman for the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, said she believed getting the federal bill through the Senate depended on "law enforcement from all these states hit by meth really rising up."
"In the past, it's been an uphill fight," said Ms. Feinstein, who is co-sponsor of the Senate bill along with Senator Jim Talent, Republican of Missouri. "It's fair to say that a substantial portion of the profits from cold medicines come from people buying them to cook meth."
Last week, when the director of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation was testifying about the need for a proposed bill there, word came that a Kansas sheriff had been shot and killed in a raid on a methamphetamine laboratory. A lobbyist scheduled to testify against the bill decided not to speak, Mr. Van Haaften said.
Jay P. Kosminsky, a spokesman for Pfizer, said his company "will not be active in lobbying against" the new bills. "Pfizer is supportive of law enforcement efforts to get a handle on the meth issue," Mr. Kosminsky said.
Pfizer has also just introduced a new product, Sudafed PE, made with a different chemical, phenylephrine, that cannot be used to make methamphetamine, Mr. Kosminsky said. The original formulation remains on the market.
Virginia Cox, a vice president of the Consumer Healthcare Products Association, which represents the over-the-counter drug industry, said, "We think there are better alternatives than what was done in Oklahoma, striking a better balance between consumers getting their medicines and keeping these products out of the hands of criminals."
The Oklahoma law, and many of the proposed state laws, inconvenience people with colds who do not live near a pharmacy, Ms. Cox said. And because the vast majority of the drug comes from large laboratories that do not rely on over-the-counter cold pills, she said, the proposed laws would do little good.
In the United States, methamphetamine first gained popularity in California in the 1950's, where it was made by outlaw biker gangs. During the 1990's it gradually spread across the Rockies to rural areas in the Midwest. In the past year it has approached the East Coast in states from Vermont to Florida.
Typically, the drug has been used by rural, poor white people, usually in their twenties or older, drug specialists say. Given its strong odor, it is easier to cook in isolated areas.
That is why the drug experts are alarmed at what is happening in Minneapolis and St. Paul. "There is an unprecedented increase in meth in our metro area that we've never seen before," said Carol Falkowski, director of research communications at the Hazelden Foundation, a drug treatment and research organization in Center City, Minn.
Dave Ettesvold, a drug counselor at the Harmony Alternative Learning Center in Maplewood, which educates students with behavioral problems, said he recently surveyed 57 high school students and found that 38 percent said they had used methamphetamine in the past year.
One student at Harmony, a 17-year-old senior named Ali, said she started using the drug at 13. Soon, she was smoking it, snorting it and even eating it. After several years of this, and stays at inpatient treatment centers followed by relapses, Ali said, she had a complete breakdown. "I didn't even know what I was saying," she said. "I was just crying and crying. I finally realized what I was doing wasn't for me."
As for how many other students are using meth, Ali said: "It's like one big circle. There are so many kids using, I couldn't even count." |
| |
|
Vallarta Weddings
Tell a Friend
Site Map
Print this Page
Email Us