WAR ON METH MAKE IT A SESSION PRIORITY

Gov. Tim Pawlenty has lined up on the right side of a spat that last
year stalled a comprehensive legal assault on sale and use of the
psychotropic drug methamphetamine, or "meth."

That gubernatorial push should help get the anti-meth bill assembled
last year by Sen. Julie Rosen, R-Fairmont, moving well in advance of
the 2005 session's omnibus bills.

Combatting the meth crime epidemic should be seen as urgent lawmaking
business. Scarcely a week passes in Minnesota without news of another
violent crime in which the suspected culprit is addicted to meth. Its
chronic use is associated with intense paranoia, hallucinations and
violent rages, as well as an assortment of physical maladies. Photos
of severe tooth decay caused by the drug, published in this newspaper
earlier this month, gave many readers a lingering chill.

Rosen's bill attacks meth in a variety of commendable,
noncontroversial ways. It would lengthen sentences for manufacture,
sale and use of the drug, add 10 meth specialists to the Bureau of
Criminal Apprehension, start a program of public education and create
a fund for the cleanup of the smelly mess a "meth lab" leaves behind.

Just one provision in Rosen's package met with resistance last year
from retailers and House Republicans. It requires that the
nonprescription cold remedies containing ephedrine or pseudoephedrine,
used to make meth, be sold from behind a pharmacy counter, with a
limit of two packages per customer. Further, it provides that
consumers must show a photo ID and provide a signature before buying.

Those are inconveniences, to be sure. But Rosen reports that when
those retail rules were employed in Oklahoma, the number of meth
production labs discovered in the state dropped more than 60 percent.
Results that positive have legislators in a number of meth-plagued
states, including Iowa, North Dakota and Wisconsin, seeking
restrictions of their own on the easy purchase -- or theft -- of drugs
containing ephedrine. Minnesota needs to get into this fight too.

Pawlenty told the crowd at the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce's annual
session-starting dinner that he supports moving those medicines behind
pharmacy counters. His considerable sway over House Republican
thinking should speed the progress of Rosen's bill this year.