IN METH WAR, PHARMACY LOGS GO UNREVIEWED

Ephedrine Laws Have Helped Reduce Number Of
Domestic Labs, Officials Say

When you sign your name to buy certain cold medicines, no one might
ever look through the log that pharmacies and other stores are
required to keep to aid the battle against methamphetamine, a highly
addictive stimulant that most law enforcement agencies consider their
No. 1 drug problem.

Two years after the Texas Legislature passed a law that made it
harder to buy Sudafed and other over-the-counter medicines containing
ephedrine and pseudoephedrine - key ingredients of meth - many police
and sheriffs' agencies said they don't have time to routinely check
the logs, most of which are kept on paper.

Several Central Texas law enforcement officials said the lack of a
centralized database, for which the Legislature did not provide the
funding, means they can't just punch in a name and see how often an
individual is buying the cold medications in stores around Texas.

Austin police don't check the logs, unless they are working on a case
or a pharmacist calls about a suspicious purchase, said officer
Veneza Aguinaga,a spokeswoman for the Austin Police Department. There
are simply too many stores to keep up with, she said.

Even so, state law enforcement officials say the law has sharply cut
meth lab production. In addition to the logs, the state law, along
with a 2006 federal law, limits how much of the medicines a person
can buy and requires that the drugs be kept behind the counter, a
rule that some law officers credit with having the greatest effect on
quashing meth labs.

At the same time, many stores appear to have stopped selling the
medicines, in part because the state now requires convenience stores
and other outlets that lack a pharmacy to pay a $600 registration fee
for the right to sell the products for two years. Out of 30,000 to
40,000 stores the state estimated to be in that group, only about 300
paid the fee, said Karen Tannert, chief pharmacist with the Drugs and
Medical Devices Group at the Department of State Health Services.

"Prior to the ephedrine law, individuals that were manufacturing were
going into the stores and were scooping the shelves clear," said
Detective John Cottle, narcotics district commander for Austin and
the surrounding areas at the Texas Department of Public Safety.

Stores that contain pharmacies don't pay the fee because they already
are licensed by the Board of Pharmacy, Tannert said. The state law
took effect Aug. 1, 2005, and statewide seizures of meth labs dropped
by half from 2005 to 2006, said DPS spokesman Tom Vinger. From
January to September of this year, just 33 meth labs were seized,
compared with 103 for all of 2006. In 2002, Texas law enforcement
seized more than 350 meth labs.

There have been similar drops around the country since the state and
federal laws passed, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration.

But that doesn't mean meth use has dropped, law enforcement officials
say. Statewide, DPS says it seized 302 kilograms of meth during
traffic stops in 2006, up from 159 kilos the year before and 197 in
2004. The DEA, meanwhile, saw its meth seizures in Texas jump from
813 kilos in 2004 to 1,054 in 2005, then down to 681 last year.

Law officers said meth from Mexico is filling the void created by the
seizures of homegrown labs. And because demand for the drug remains
high, the price of meth is going up, officers said. In the past year,
Cottle said, the price in Texas has risen from between $850 and
$1,200 an ounce to $1,500 to $1,600 an ounce. He said he fears that
increase could encourage a return of more meth labs in Texas.

In Bandera County alone, the sheriff's department says it has busted
six meth labs in the past six weeks, an unusually high number.

"On the average, we have about one every three months," said patrol
Sgt. Jerry Johnson. Most of the six were mom-and-pop operations, an
indication that the high prices could be encouraging people to "cook
for themselves," Johnson said.

A few years ago, the state lost federal funding for most of its drug
task forces - special units dedicated to drug enforcement - as the
federal government diverted the money to domestic security. Most
rural areas have fewer officers dedicated to drug investigations
than in years past. Burnet County, for example, had 10 officers
devoted to drug cases in a four-county region before the Sept. 11
terrorist attacks but lost most of them in the past two years. The
county now has four such officers, said Capt. Dwight Hardin, who is
in charge of the criminal investigations division at the sheriff's
office there.

And while Hill Country sheriff's departments say the law regulating
ephedrine and pseudoephedrine is helping, many say they still are
busy chasing meth makers, who favor rural areas where the fumes from
cooking their product are less likely to be detected.

Labs can be created in kitchens, motel rooms, even car trunks, using
legal ingredients, including: brake fluid, drain cleaner, anhydrous
ammonia, lye, coffee filters and lab glassware, in addition to cold
medicine. The labs generate toxic waste and can cause deadly explosions.

To get around the law, meth ingredient buyers will go from town to
town buying medicines, making it difficult to track them by studying
paper logs, investigators said.

In Bandera County, Johnson said he checks the logs monthly, sometimes
traveling to Kerrville, Boerne and San Antonio. Occasionally Johnson
said he will notice the same names and initiate an
investigation.

"It's a real good tool," said Hardin, the captain in Burnet County.
"Unfortunately, the Legislature did not help fund the enforcement of
it. They left it to local agencies and law enforcement to develop
their own databases."

Burnet County is talking to a company in Dallas about the possibility
of accessing a database it wants to create in some Texas communities
by computerizing pharmacy logs - if Burnet County can afford it,
Hardin said.

Oklahoma, the first state to pass a law limiting ephedrine and
pseudoephedrine purchases, pays a private vendor to compile
information from pharmacy and store logs into a central database that
law enforcement can search.

"It was necessary," said Brian Surber, a special agent with
Oklahoma's narcotics bureau ."We had an 80 to 90 percent reduction
(in meth labs) without the database. But I want a 100 percent reduction."

Texas Rep. Leo Berman, R-Tyler, a main author of the state law, said
he's pleased with it.

"We're not thinking of doing anything more statewide," he said. "The
statewide database would be costly."