BAN MULLED ON NET DRUG DIRECTIONS

WASHINGTON - Instructions for making the illegal drug methamphetamine are
easy to get from the Internet, witnesses told a Senate panel considering a
ban on online drug recipes.

Ron Doerge, Newton County sheriff in southwestern Missouri, on Wednesday
showed senators a chemical-stained sheaf of meth-making instructions a
teen-ager had copied from an Internet site he looked up using a public
library's computer. The boy used the directions to make methamphetamine
several times before he was caught, Doerge said.

"We need to eliminate these recipes from the Internet," Doerge told the
Senate Judiciary Committee, which is considering legislation that would try
to ban such instructions.

Methamphetamine became a serious problem during the 1990s, particularly in
the Southwest and Midwest, said Donnie Marshall, acting head of the Drug
Enforcement Administration. He said the drug comes from two sources: Mexican
cartels that make large quantities in Mexico or the United States and
thousands of smaller, independent labs using procedures detailed on dozens
of Internet sites.

The proposed ban on publishing drug-making instructions is part of a larger
anti-methamphetamine bill sponsored by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, the
committee's chairman. Other provisions include increased penalties for
methamphetamine makers whose clandestine labs pollute the environment and
more federal help to local police battling drug labs.

Hatch said Wednesday the committee would combine his proposal with several
other anti-methamphetamine measures from both Democrats and Republicans.

Free-speech advocates say the proposal to ban drug recipes would be
unconstitutional and nearly unenforceable on the Internet.

"The reality is, this is speech. It is not the making of drugs, it is just a
description of how drugs are made," said Shari Steele, staff lawyer for the
San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Moreover, U.S. law would not affect Internet sites based in other countries,
so banning the posting of drug-making information in this country would not
eliminate such information from the Internet, Steele said.