KEEP AN EYE ON EPHEDRINE

Canada has become the top - and perfectly legal - source of the
chemical used to produce methamphetamine, or speed, in the United
States, much to the irritation of U.S. drug-enforcement agencies.
Since the mid-1990s, the import of the chemical in question,
pseudoephedrine, into Canada has skyrocketed by 1,400 per cent.

U.S. drug-enforcement officials are right to complain that such a
huge jump in the ingredient needed for cold-remedy medications should
have served as a warning to Canadian officials that something was not
quite right on the cold-remedy front. How much medication could a
country the size of Canada possibly need? The imports would have
supplied enough of the chemical to treat all 31 million Canadians of
their colds several times over.

Since April, U.S. law-enforcement officials have seized 27 tonnes of
Canadian pseudoephedrine, enough to make 22.5 tonnes of
methamphetamine, estimated to have a street value of about $400
million U.S.

This week, U.S. federal agents carried out a series of raids across
the United States, arresting more than 50 people in connection with a
drug-smuggling operation. According to U.S. agents, smugglers buy
pseudoephedrine legally in Canada from two Quebec-based companies,
=46rega Inc. of L=C8vis and Formulex Canada Inc. of Mount Royal, then
sell it primarily to Mexican crime organizations, which use it to
produce cheap, illegal street drugs. U.S. officials said that nearly
100 per cent of the methamphetamine produced in the U.S. in the past
two years had its origins in Canada.

This is on the surface a clear-cut case of a legal substance being
turned into something that is demonstrably harmful to the American
public. While Canada is not required to harmonize its list of banned
substances with that of the U.S., it should keep track of a
potentially harmful drug.

Under current Canadian legislation, companies are required to keep
records of the purchasing and shipping orders, as well as proof that
the buyer has a drug identification number that allows them to make
the purchase.

While there has been some suggestion that individual companies be
required to monitor the end use to which pseudoephedrine is put, such
a system would be an abdication of government responsibility. It is
up to the Canadian government to draw up a regulatory system to
monitor and, if necessary, control pseudoephedrine. It is the
government that issues drug identification numbers and that decides
whether a substance should be banned. It is also the government which
has the resources to track what the buyer ultimately does with the
substance. The government should not issue a voluntary "code of
conduct" for industry, as it has suggested this week. The substance
is either worth tracking for the sake of public safety, or it isn't.
In this case, it clearly is.