MethShield™

Channel Nine in Australia have been running a series of pieces this week on the amphetamine trade. This morning they gave some coverage to Project STOP which is the MethShield equivalent in Australia.

 

Watch the video here

 

Meth makers easily evade pseudoephedrine tracking system

 Video

SPRINGFIELD -- The issue is medicine versus methamphetamine: pharmacies want to keep selling cold medications to sick people but don’t want to sell them to drug addicts and drug manufacturers. It’s a struggle for those behind the counters. It’s also an issue that Missouri state government could help solve if it would fund a law to create a computerized tracking system for the sale of medications containing pseudoephedrine.

A reporter went undercover to show how easy it is for drug addicts to go from store to store, stocking up on small amounts of pseudoephedrine, which they use to make meth, blatantly breaking a state law. The burden falls on pharmacies.

"People get smart. They know how to abuse the system. They know what to do,” said Heather Ebers, a pharmacy technician.

Ebers and other pharmacy technicians know the signs of meth abuse.

"Usually the teeth are either just decaying, they're black; they have a lot of grime underneath the nails. You can tell they've been cooking up something,” she said.

The hopscotching to buy cold or allergy medications with pseudoephedrine is called smurfing. Pharmacists can't always stop it if the purchased amount doesn't exceed the legal limit.

Missouri law allows someone to buy 3,600 milligrams of pseudoephedrine in one day -- about 120 tablets of regular strength Sudafed or a generic brand. So someone can walk into a pharmacy and buy up to five boxes without breaking the law.

Most doctors and pharmacists say one box is plenty for more than one cold. The monthly limit for one person is roughly 300 regular strength tablets, or about 10 per day.

Since 2005, pharmacies have had to keep paper logs of names of people who buy products containing pseudoephedrine. The logs are available to law enforcement officers who want to go from pharmacy to pharmacy to see who's buying the products at multiple places. That's a time consuming task for law officers.

Addicts are apparently driving long distances to get tablets with pseudoephedrine. Ebers says sometimes they come in carloads – one came recently to Springfield from as far as West Plains -- for cold medicine.

“They probably stopped at every single pharmacy on the way here,” said Ebers.

Small, family owned pharmacies are also frustrated.

"We've turned into the Sudafed police,” said Jeff Goetzinger, owner of Orchard Hills Pharmacy.

Goetzinger says, since the current logging system doesn't work, he made his own policy.

"We limit it to one box, no matter what,” he said.

Goetzinger believes a statewide computer database would be a big deterrent and would help decrease Missouri's meth epidemic. Ebers, who works for a large pharmacy chain, agrees.

"They're destroying their lives, their family. You see young mothers come in with their babies on their shoulders, buying Sudafed,” said Ebers, “or needles and I can't do anything about it."

The Missouri Board of Pharmacy says each store has the right to refuse a sale if illegal drug activity is suspected or if it appears the person is high.

The Missouri Legislature and Gov. Matt Blunt enacted a law last year to require pharmacies to participate in a statewide electronic logging system for the sales of pseudoephedrine products. The Legislature, however, didn't appropriate any funds for the state to build the system. The system would make the sales records easier to track and could alert pharmacy technicians that they shouldn't be selling such products to certain people.

KY3 News, Marie Neider/Gene Hartley