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
