STATE OFFICIALS WANT TO TIGHTEN ANTI-METH LAWS

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 and slowed the flow of addicts coming to Illinois
from border states, Attorney General Lisa Madigana€TMs office is
looking to tweak the system.

"Wea€TMre making steady progress on a number of fronts," said Cara
Smith, the attorney generala€TMs 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 cana€TMt 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
couldna€TMt read the stuff."

To avoid detection and circumvent restrictions, meth makers often
travel long distances to obtain 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 that state 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 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 youa€TMre 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 dona€TMt 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.

"Wea€TMre not seeing meth cooks come from other states because a€|
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 also has led to
smaller batches of the drug being seized, Smith said.

"The cooks cana€TMt 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, 346 of
which sold products containing pseudoephedrine. The number included
271 pharmacies and 75 convenience stores.

The check found 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 th