STATE LOOKING AT CHANGING NEW METH LAW

SPRINGFIELD - State law enforcement officials want to improve
logbooks used to track cold medicine sales that could be connected to
methamphetamine. While a new law appears to have made it more
difficult for meth cooks to make the drug, as well as slowed the flow
of addicts coming to Illinois from border states, Attorney General
Lisa Madigan's office is looking to tweak the system.

"We're making steady progress on a number of fronts," said Cara
Smith, the attorney general's policy director.

Since mid January, when the law went into effect, drugs containing
pseudoephedrine, the main ingredient in methamphetamine, have been
kept behind store counters or doled out by pharmacists. People buying
these types of medications must also show photo identification and
sign a logbook.

However, the logs can't be searched in real time and there is no
standard for how the records must be kept. "Sometimes the pharmacist
would write out the information, which was really helpful because it
was normally legible and kept in a consistent way," Smith said.
"Other times, they would just turn the sheet over to the customer and
have the customer scrawl it in and you couldn't read the stuff."

To avoid detection and circumvent restrictions, meth makers often
travel long distances to scrounge up the needed ingredients.

Creating an electronic database could make it easier for law
enforcement to build cases and track pseudoephedrine sales as they occur.

Oklahoma has a tracking system that went online in August and
Illinois officials are planning a visit to see how the system works.

Smith said a working group of law enforcement and retailers are
considering two types of tracking systems. One would alert store
clerks and pharmacists when a purchaser had reached the monthly limit
of pseudoephedrine-based drugs. The other type of system simply
records the sale so police can use the information to build cases.
State Rep. Chapin Rose, R-Mahomet, who has pushed several key pieces
of legislation on methamphetamine, said he is leery of a database.

"If you're not a meth addict why should you have your name in a
database," Rose said. "The vast majority of people that buy Sudafed
are not meth addicts. I don't like the idea of the government
tracking my every move."

The new law has made Illinois less attractive to out-of-state meth
cooks, who were trying to avoid heavy restrictions in their home
states, Smith said.

"We're not seeing meth cooks come from other states because ...you
have no better chance of getting your Sudafed here than you do in the
state you are coming from," she said.

Difficulty getting ingredients for making meth has also led to
smaller batches of the drug being seized, Smith said.

"The cooks can't get large quantities to make big batches like they
could when the key ingredients were unrestricted," she said.

However, compliance with the law by retailers remains an issue.

In May, the state did a random compliance check of 462 stores of
which 346 sold products containing psuedoephedrine. This included 271
pharmacies and 75 convenience stores.

The check found that pharmacists tended to be in compliance, while
convenience stores fell far behind. Overall, only 9 of the 75
convenience stores checked followed state law. Cook County scored a
49 percent compliance rate, the lowest in the state.