NEW DRUG LAW A REAL PILL FOR COLD, ALLERGY SUFFERERS

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Like a lot of other users of cold and allergy medicines,
Heidi Schallberg ran into a learning curve after a new Missouri law went
into effect.

The law requires drugs with ephedrine or pseudoephedrine as their main
active ingredient to be sold from behind the pharmacy counter, making it a
little harder for the bad guys who make methamphetamine from the pills.

At least 16 other states, including Kansas, have already enacted similar laws.

It means that the days of running in and grabbing a box of cold pills off
the shelf are over. And that's what Schallberg forgot the first time she
tried to buy her Claritin-D allergy medicine under the new law.

The 33-year-old data base tech knew the law was coming, but forgot that one
Sunday afternoon last month when she ran to Target like she always does.

"Apparently everybody had thought ahead more than I did," says Schallberg,
who lives near Brookside. "It was 3 or 4 and the pharmacy was closed, and I
couldn't get it. And I'm like 'OK, it's not a huge thing, but it is a pain'"

She's used to the routine now. She has to go to the pharmacy counter and
show a photo ID if the pharmacist doesn't know her. And she can't stock up
anymore like she used to when the drugs went on sale - the new law limits
how much can be purchased each month.

Good thing she's old enough, too. The new law requires customers buying
ephedrine and pseudoephedrine products to be at least 18.

The next change: By Sept. 15 every pharmacy must record the name of anyone
buying the drugs, a log that state narcotic officials say police have the
right to look at.

The law has changed pharmacists' lives as well. For one thing, they have
more paperwork.

"Part of their duty is to identify the patient properly. If you go
somewhere where you don't know the pharmacist, you may have to show ID,"
says pharmacist Sharlea Leatherwood, owner of North Oak Pharmacy in Kansas
City and former president of the National Community Pharmacists Association.

The pharmacist might also ask what you're using the medicine for to help
determine whether you really need the amount you're buying.

"(Pharmacists) understand that we're all paying the price for the abusers
out there, and that's unfortunate," Leatherwood says.

"On the other hand, I want to say that pharmacists are very happy to help
with this problem."

Leatherwood served on a Food and Drug Administration task force of
pharmacists and legislators that studied ways to join the growing war on meth.

In the ongoing battle, drug companies started packaging the medicines in
smaller containers - no more 100-pill bottles of Sudafed on the shelf.
Moving the cold and allergy pills behind the counter was a last resort,
Leatherwood says.

Some drug company lobbyists fought the legislation, worrying that it would
inconvenience law-abiding consumers.

"We went into it realizing there was going to be some minor inconvenience
for the pharmacists and customers. But the upsides outweigh them," says Ron
Fitzwater, CEO of the Missouri Pharmacy Association in Jefferson City.

Meth cooks know how to get the ephedrine out of starch-based tablets but
can't extract it from liquid and gel capsule cold products, which don't
contain pseudoephedrine as their single active ingredients.

That's why those medications are unaffected by the new law and why you
still see them on store shelves.

Drug companies such as Pfizer, which makes Sudafed, have created new
formulas that don't contain pseudoephedrine. Sudafed PE, released in
January, contains phenylephrine instead of pseudoephedrine; it can be
purchased off the shelf. But whether it or any other new formulations
coming down the pike work as well as the old is something consumers have
yet to determine.

"I'm a little worried that this will cause the drug companies to change the
ingredients. And will they be as effective?" Schallberg says.

The new law also restricts consumers to buying no more than 9 grams of
medicines containing pseudoephedrine in a 30-day period, says Susan McCann,
administrator of the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs in Jefferson
City, Mo.

That applies only to the medicines bought without a prescription, she says.
"You have to do the best you can to make sure that a patient doesn't buy
more than the specified amount in the 30-day period," says the pharmacy
association's Fitzwater.

"If patient X comes in on Aug. 3 and buys the monthly allotment, then comes
back in on Aug. 17, you have to have a system that tells you they already
bought what they can."

But because these logs are not tied together in any way - in the absence of
any centralized file, one store doesn't know what another store is selling
- - the new law doesn't prevent meth cooks, or consumers, from going from one
store to another and buying the pills.

"But law enforcement knows who is doing the shopping," Fitzwater says. "It
will just be a little more work for law enforcement."