GOVERNOR SAYS JOIN BATTLE TO BEAT METH

In signing a bill to make some cold remedies prescription-only, he says
inconvenience is a small price to quash local meth labs

Gov. Ted Kulongoski called on Oregonians Tuesday to share the burden of
attacking the methamphetamine epidemic, signing legislation that will
require prescriptions for decongestants containing an ingredient often
diverted into the illegal meth trade.

The big question now is how quickly state regulators will implement the new
restrictions -- which will be the toughest in the nation -- on medications
containing pseudoephedrine.

The new law says the prescription requirements must be in place no later
than next July 1, but officials say they may be able to implement the new
restrictions months before that. Kulongoski said he wants the state to act
as quickly as possible.

"I am well aware, as the Legislature was, that this is inconvenient for some
of our citizens," Kulongoski said at a signing ceremony in Portland. "But we
all have a role to play in stopping this meth epidemic. For some, that means
providing temporary care for children removed from a (meth) home, for others
that means finding another cold and flu remedy."

Oregon has increasingly sought to tighten access to pseudoephedrine in an
attempt to shut down the jerry-rigged meth labs found throughout the state.
While most of the state's meth comes from superlabs in Mexico, police say
the local meth labs contaminate neighborhoods and endanger the children of
addicts who turn to cooking meth. The illicit drug cannot be made without
pseudoephedrine or its chemical sibling, ephedrine.

Oregon last year became the second state in the country to require that many
pseudoephedrine products be kept behind the counter instead of on open
shelves. This year, the Legislature was eager to take a tougher stand on a
drug blamed for ripping apart families and causing a spike in property
crimes, prompting the prescription requirement.

In most cases, Kulongoski said consumers can turn to alternative products,
particularly those containing a different decongestant, phenylephrine. For
example, one of the most popular pseudoephedrine products, Sudafed, is now
also available in a version using phenylephrine, marketed as Sudafed PE.

If those phenylephrine-based products are seen by consumers as effective,
controversy over Oregon's prescription requirement "will just fade away,"
predicted Gary Schnabel, executive director of the Oregon Pharmacy Board.

In the meantime, Schnabel said the board will set up a work group to figure
out how to implement the prescription requirement. He said he thought that
January would be the earliest that the new regulation could be in place.

Shawn Miller, a Salem lobbyist representing the Oregon Grocery Association,
said prescription drugs need to be inventoried differently and that
retailers need time to make the switch.

The new law requires products with pseudoephedrine to be treated as a
Schedule III drug. That means doctors can prescribe the product over the
phone and consumers could get up to five refills in a six-month period.

That is an "extreme" measure that could drive up health-care costs, said
Virginia Cox, a spokeswoman for the Consumer Healthcare Products
Association, which represents manufacturers of over-the-counter drugs. She
said it poses a particular hardship to consumers who don't have health
insurance.

Rob Bovett of the Oregon Narcotics Enforcement Association said the number
of meth lab seizures has been cut in half since the state first began to
restrict access to pseudoephedrine last November. He said there have been
smaller declines in border counties because meth addicts have been able to
buy pseudoephedrine off the shelves in Washington and Idaho.

"In a lot of the interior counties of Oregon, meth labs have all but
disappeared," said Bovett. For example, Lincoln County had averaged about
two meth lab seizures a month before November. There has only been one
since, he said.

Kulongoski signed four meth-related bills at the Southwest Portland offices
of the Oregon Partnership, a non-partisan group that works to combat
substance abuse. Its services include an around-the-clock crisis hot line.