A PRAISEWORTHY FEDERAL METH LAW

Congress made good on an important promise last week. American
communities had pleaded for tough federal anti-methamphe-tamine
legislation, and that's exactly what lawmakers delivered.

Months of dickering paid off when a House-Senate committee came
together on a sweeping bill attacking the nation's meth crisis. In a
vacuum created by White House foot-dragging on the problem, a
congressional caucus of 130 Republicans and Democrats led the way,
forging a hard-line law its members had promised to states and
communities ravaged by an epidemic of meth-fueled crime and social
breakdown.

The legislative process was ragged, as so often is the case. And for a
discouraging moment last week it looked as if the panel would settle
on a bill too soft to put a clamp on meth production. House members
were ready to accept provisions allowing people to buy unlimited
quantities of pseudoephedrine in the course of a month.

Pseudoephedrine is the key ingredient in such common cold and allergy
medicines as Sudafed. It is also the key ingredient in the manufacture
of methamphetamine. Meth "cooks" working in crude labs can use the
easily obtained cold medications to produce the dangerous
mind-altering drug.

That's why a stringent federal law is needed: to put a stop to
interstate "smurfing," the slang term for going store-to-store buying
over-the-counter pseudoephedrine products. Without a federal law, meth
cooks in a state such as Oregon, which has a strong anti-meth law, can
simply buy their pseudoephedrine in a neighboring state with more lax
laws.

In the end, though, the House-Senate members produced a workable
compromise. They added a per-person limit on retail sales of
pseudoephedrine. Individual purchasers will be limited to 9 grams per
month, which is slightly more than enough to treat four people
suffering weeklong colds.

The bill's international component also is commendable. It will allow
the State Department to withhold aid from countries that are importing
excessive amounts of pseudoephedrine. This provision is utterly
essential to curbing superlabs that produce huge supplies of meth
using pseudoephedrine imported into other countries, most notably Mexico.

Once this bill becomes law, the congressional meth caucus will still
have much more work to do. Foremost, it must direct its growing clout
at the Bush administration's Office of National Drug Control Policy.
This office, headed by White House drug czar John Walters, has not
provided sufficient emphasis and leadership on the battle against meth.

The administration must reverse its push to reduce federal funding for
local law enforcement initiatives such as joint task forces that fight
the meth trade. And federal measures are desperately needed to help
communities grapple with meth-related issues such as child health and
safety, hazardous laboratory clean-up and addiction recovery programs.

The U.S. needs a comprehensive new national strategy against drug
abuse. Members of Congress, by coming together on a promising federal
meth bill, have shown how it can be done.