In a new attack on the surging methamphetamine problem, a growing number of states are considering laws that would require a prescription for cold and allergy pills used in making the illegal stimulant. But the proposals also are meeting resistance from critics who say patients shouldn’t be forced to visit doctors to get, say, a Sudafed prescription.
Decongestants long have been a concern of law enforcement because they contain pseudoephedrine, the key ingredient for cooking up methamphetamine. Five years ago, Congress passed measures to curb meth production, which included requiring pharmacies to keep pseudoephedrine drugs behind sales counters and setting limits on how much an individual customer could buy.
But as The New York Times reports, meth cooks have found ways past those restrictions. For example, they employ “smurfers,” people who buy pseudoephedrine at multiple stores, in small enough amounts to evade detection. So lawmakers in Alabama, Missouri, Nevada, Oklahoma, Tennessee and several other states have introduced bills to make the drug prescription-only.
In Michigan, State Rep. Matt Lori is working on a similar law. He told the Kalamazoo Gazette that he is fed up with how much methamphetamine is costing taxpayers for law enforcement.
Two states, Oregon and Mississippi, already have prescription-only laws. Reuters reports that, in Mississippi, the results have been “dramatic,” with meth lab busts in the state dropping nearly 70 percent in the eight months since the law took effect. “Prescription-only legislation works,” said the director of the state’s Bureau of Narcotics.
But prescription-only bills have been rejected recently in Arkansas, Kansas, Kentucky and West Virginia amid heavy lobbying by drug makers and pharmacy groups, which say the measures would be too burdensome for cold and allergy sufferers. “We can’t change lives just to stop these weirdo people,” said Joy Krieger, executive director of the St. Louis chapter of the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, who is fighting Missouri’s prescription-only bill.
State Rep. Rob Schaaf, a practicing physician, told Missouri’s St. Joseph News-Press he would resort to a filibuster if necessary to defeat the state’s proposed Meth Lab Elimination Act. Forcing patients to make an office visit to get pseudoephedrine, he said, would take “valuable time away from medical professionals.”
St Louis’ Riverfront Times says it is “a huge pain in the neck to get in to see your family doctor — or even an urgent care physician — these days. We’ve found ourselves in germ-ridden waiting rooms, missing half a day of work and putting down our $40 co-pay, just to get our Z-Pac. Should it be that difficult to get Sudafed?”
