REGULATION AIMS TO CUT DOWN ON METH MANUFACTURE

Large bottles of pills containing pseudoephedrine -- the active ingredient
in many over-the-counter cold and allergy medications -- no longer will be
available for sale under new Board of Pharmacy regulations passed Wednesday.

The regulation won't affect drugstores, where only packages of up to 96
tablets are sold in push-through foil packaging. They will affect places
such as truck stops and smoke shops, which can sell bottles containing
hundreds of pills, making it easier for people to produce illegal drugs at
home.

The new regulation will hamper those who cook methamphetamine in home labs
because it's tedious and time-consuming to push thousands of pills through
foil, said Louis Ling, general counsel for the Nevada State Board of Pharmacy.

"It's much easier to manufacture meth when you can get the pills out of
these huge bottles, because you're limited to three packs of pills at local
drugstores," Ling said. "This is going to make it significantly harder to
gather enough pills."

It takes about 17,000 tablets to make a batch of methamphetamine, he said.