Supply-side fight: Loopholes identified in year-old Combat Meth Act

By: GARY WARTH - Staff Writer | Saturday, November 24, 2007 11:50 PM PST ∞

A year-old law has made it harder for methamphetamine-makers to get the pseudoephedrine needed for their drug, but even the legislator who wrote the new consumer restriction sees flaws in it.

Since the enactment of the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act in September 2006, cold and allergy medicines containing pseudoephedrine are kept behind the counter, and consumers, who are limited to just 9 grams a month, must show identification and sign a log book before buying it.

Pseudoephedrine is a legal but regulated chemical used in nonprescription allergy medicines and decongestants such as Sudafed. It also is a crucial ingredient in methamphetamine, a highly addictive and illegal stimulant known for causing serious side effects including erratic and dangerous behavior.

Before the law, amateur chemists were able to produce meth in clandestine home labs after buying or shoplifting large quantities of pseudoephedrine products from stores. In a practice called "smurfing," drug-makers could stockpile pseudoephedrine by going from store to store to buy cold medicine. Requiring customers to produce identification, sign their names and limit their purchases all are steps intended to prevent smurfing.

The law is credited with helping reduce the number of domestic clandestine labs making methamphetamine throughout the nation. But the law also has at least one loophole: logbooks are not linked to a network, so retailers have no way of knowing whether the shopper at their counter is a legitimate customer seeking help for a stuffy nose or a smurfer going from store to store, producing identification and signing the logbook at each stop.

While limiting the amount of medicine that can be purchased undoubtedly would slow and frustrate smurfers, it might not stop the most-determined meth-makers, who have proven to be patient and diligent. In a similar strategy 10 years ago, pharmaceutical companies agreed to sell pseudoephedrine products only in blister packs, a move that lawmakers believed at the time would cripple domestic meth production because cooks would have to pop out each pill from its package one at a time.

It didn't work.

Still, a limit of 9 grams a month is a significant restriction when compared with the amount of precursor chemicals used by large meth labs. In the 1980s, resident Ronald Lee Henslee was arrested for possessing 1,200 pounds of ephedrine powder, a methamphetamine precursor.

Closing the loophole
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., introduced the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act bill and said it has been largely successful, but she sees room for improvement. She and eight other senators are co-sponsors of Senate Bill 1276, introduced May 3 by Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., to fund an electronic database that would immediately tell retailers if customers have bought their quota of pseudoephedrine products for the month.

Even without a national electronic data system, Feinstein said the law has contributed to several positive signs in the battle against meth this last year.

"Since the Combat Meth Act went into effect last year, we've seen evidence that the number of meth labs in operation in the United States has decreased dramatically," she said in September. "If meth cooks can't obtain large amounts of pseudoephedrine, then they can't mix their deadly cocktails."

In September, Feinstein introduced another bill, the Combat Methamphetamine Enhancement Act, to require all retailers to certify that their employees have been trained in the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act.

"And if they don't, they simply won't be able to purchase pseudoephedrine products from distributors," Feinstein said.

The measure would require retailers to file self-certifications with the Drug Enforcement Administration stating that their employees are trained and in compliance with the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act.

In February, the DEA mailed 26,000 letters to pharmacies that had not self-certified, resulting in 16,000 pharmacies being certified. In May, the DEA discovered an additional 8,300 businesses that were not certified. In all, the DEA suspects up to 30,000 sellers of pseudoephedrine and ephedrine products have not self-certified.

No local arrests
The first man in the nation charged with violating the act, William F. Fousse of Ontario, N.Y, pleaded guilty in June to a misdemeanor charge of buying more than 9 grams of pseudoephedrine products. Fousse said he bought the products not to make methamphetamine, but because he was overusing cold medications to fight drowsiness and headaches caused by alcoholism.

In San Diego County, Deputy District Attorney Damon Mosler said nobody has been arrested for violating the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act, and he had not heard of burglaries at local pharmacies to steal pseudoephedrine, as have occurred in other cities.

"The interesting thing for us is, we had a huge manufacturing problem in San Diego for years, but it's harder to get the chemicals," Mosler said. "And the fact they have to buy the pills makes it not as financially rewarding."

While methamphetamine use still is a significant problem in the county, the number of meth-making labs has dramatically decreased and the drug itself is getting more expensive and less pure, according to several indicators.

The county Department of Environmental Health reported investigating 1,006 labs or sites used to dump methamphetamine-production chemicals between 1987 and 2002. Of those, the peak year was in 1989 with 151 sites. With a few exceptions, the number has been decreasing since then. Sites have numbered fewer than 100 since 1990, and dropped below 50 in 1994. There were 25 reported in 2000, followed by 22 in 2001 and 19 in 2002.

Purity falls
Nationally, the Drug Enforcement Administration has reported a 41 percent drop in the number of domestic meth labs in 2006 compared with 2005, and purity levels reportedly have dropped to their lowest since 1997.

A report on methamphetamine use by adult and juvenile arrestees in 2006, released by the San Diego Association of Governments in September, revealed that half of the people arrested who used meth said it was more expensive and harder to get than the previous year.

The report also noted the financial motivation for making the drug. People arrested for making methamphetamine said a typical batch of 454 grams costs $250 to make and was worth $6,500 on the street, according to the report.

Contact staff writer Gary Warth at (760) 740-5410 or gwarth@nctimes.com.

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