RETAILERS RECRUITED IN METH WAR

Law Enforcement: Store Employees Are Asked To Spot Suspicious Purchases Of
Material Used To Make The Drug.

OWENSBORO, Ky. -- Four boxes of cold medicine and a suspicious store clerk
put 27-year-old Suzett Calloway back behind bars.

Wanted for murder after her son died from injuries he suffered in an
explosion while, police say, she and her boyfriend were cooking up
methamphetamine in their home, Calloway fled Georgia. She eluded police for
several days until she walked up to a checkout counter at a Wal-Mart in
western Kentucky. She was carrying four boxes of Sudafed.

The sales clerk, on the lookout for customers buying ingredients that could
be used to make meth, urged a Wal-Mart security guard to follow Calloway.
After a stop for more Sudafed at a second retailer, Calloway was arrested.
She and her boyfriend are in jail awaiting trial on murder and drug
charges; both have pleaded innocent. Increasingly, police in several states
are informally turning to retailers for assistance in catching meth makers
cooking the lucrative and addictive drug in backyard sheds, motel rooms and
vans.

"Without their help, you can't hardly do anything about the meth problem,
at the rate it's increasing," said Trooper Mark Applin of the Kentucky
State Police.

Some retailers say they participate out of a sense of duty. Others do it to
curb meth-cooking shoplifters who might buy one box of a cold medicine,
only to steal three others. Still others worry they will be forced to keep
a buyer's log or face other burdensome restrictions if they don't do
something to help, said Joe Lackey, president of the Indiana Grocery and
Convenience Store Assn.

Not everyone likes the idea of police turning to shopkeepers for help. One
civil rights advocate said using retailers to report shoppers could lead to
abuse in evidence gathering. "It's probably not fair to the manufacturer,
but what do you do?" asked Lou Watkins of Baum's Market in Boonville, Ind.,
where the bulk of the cold medicine is kept behind the counter. "They steal
more of it than they buy."

Some call meth the poor man's cocaine because it is a highly addictive
stimulant that produces a euphoria similar to cocaine but lasts longer: six
to eight hours compared with 20 to 60 minutes for cocaine.

Unlike most illegal drugs, the products used to make meth are legal and
easily available: cold pills, nail polish remover, rubbing alcohol, salt
and batteries. The recipe is on the Internet. The overhead costs are low:
roughly $100 for a gram, about the contents of a sugar packet; $400 per
ounce, with payoffs of $2,000 to $2,500 per ounce.

"The price of gold is about $320 per ounce. It's worth more than gold on
the streets," said Det. Joe Moran of the Owensboro Police Department.
Nationwide, the number of so-called meth labs seized by the Drug
Enforcement Administration increased from 287 in 1994 to 1,837 in 2000,
said Joe Long, a DEA spokesman. That does not include labs seized by state
and local authorities.

In street lingo, those who drive from store to store buying or shoplifting
meth ingredients are "P and B" people: pill and lithium battery buyers.

To cut off the "P and B" people, police in Kentucky and Indiana say they
had to turn to retailers.

They distributed fliers listing meth ingredients and asked store operators
to report license plate numbers of suspicious-looking customers. In
Columbus, Ind., a Wal-Mart employee in March reported that a customer had
attempted to shoplift three boxes of cold medicine as he purchased rubber
gloves and coffee filters.

Police searching the 41-year-old man's car found a "meth lab" inside it,
along with 1,100 cold medicine tablets, Columbus police Sgt. Matt Myers said.

"That is one that would not have been solved if the Wal-Mart employee had
not caught him shoplifting and called it in," Myers said.

Employees at Wal-Mart's 2,700 stores are encouraged to help police, said
Rob Phillips, a spokesman at the company's Bentonville, Ark., headquarters.
The store limits the sale of cold medicines and some diet supplements to
three boxes.

"It's not about sales," Phillips said. "It's doing what's right."

Carl Johnson, director of government relations for Sudafed manufacturer
Pfizer Inc., said the company supports allowing consumers to buy a maximum
of three boxes of cold medicine.

But it does not back placing cold medicine behind a counter.

"It's really outrageous that the illegal activities of these illicit drug
manufacturers and dealers are really turning good medicines into something
quite the contrary," said Bob Fauteux, a Pfizer spokesman. In the process,
he said, they are making it increasingly difficult for consumers with
legitimate needs for the products to purchase them.