JUDGE URGES CONTROLS ON KEY METH INGREDIENT

McMINNVILLE, Tenn. - Newly elected Circuit Judge Bart Stanley called over
the weekend for federal controls over the sale of ephedrine, an inexpensive
cold remedy that is also the chemical backbone for the illegal,
mind-altering drug methamphetamine.

Law enforcement officials here and in other rural areas have been battling
the manufacture of the cheap and extremely addictive ''meth'' but concede
that it's almost impossible to eradicate drug production, which is carried
out on propane-fueled camp stoves in home basements, farm sheds, woodland
hideaways and even in moving automobiles.

''Until you make it very hard to obtain (the essential chemical
ingredient), you're not going to stop this problem,'' Stanley told
interviewers on Viewpoints, the View from Here, a discussion program on
public radio WCPI 91.3 FM. ''I would encourage your listeners to lobby
Congress'' for strict controls on the sale of ephedrine, possibly including
a physician's prescription.

Stanley, whose wife is a registered pharmacist, formally takes office
today, but because of the holiday will not actually start hearing cases
until tomorrow. At 32, he is believed to be the youngest circuit judge in
Tennessee.

''Anything you can do to intervene in the manufacture (of meth) would
certainly be a help,'' Warren County Sheriff Jackie Matheny said yesterday
in reaction to Stanley's proposal. Matheny's officers and members of the
16-county Southeastern Task Force broke up two meth laboratories here last
week.

He estimated that county authorities had raided an average of one lab a
week since the synthetic drug first appeared here in 1997.

Stanley noted that meth manufacture affects primarily rural communities
because producers seek remote, isolated locations to set up their makeshift
labs.

Two prominent pharmacists-independent druggist Nestor Stewart and Bill
Davis of the Wal-Mart Pharmacy-agreed that some appropriate kind of
controls would be useful, but also called for legitimate sellers of
ephedrine and the related pseudophedrine to exercise judgment and diligence.

''If someone came in and asked for 10 packages, we would certainly ask some
questions,'' said Stewart, whose pharmacy keeps all such nonprescription
drugs behind the prescription counter. ''Most professional pharmacists I
know are real discreet about their sales.''

Legislated controls short of a prescription requirement might take the form
of a customer-signature system, with personal identification verified by
photo driver license, Davis suggested. The legislation should allow
pharmacies to compare their sales logs to help identify high-quantity
buyers, he said.