COMMITTEE TRIES TO RESOLVE N.C. METH BILL

Push-Pull Begins In Effort To Remove Illegal Drug's Main Ingredient From
Pharmacy Shelves

RALEIGH - A legislative subcommittee began hashing out a compromise
yesterday on a bill to restrict pseudoephedrine, a decongestant that is
also a main ingredient for the illegal drug methamphetamine.

With five of the subcommittee's seven members leaning against strict
regulation of pseudoephedrine, the group is expected to endorse a weaker
version of the bill.

"The access is what I'm concerned about, when you have (sinusitis) real
bad," said Rep. Earline Parmon, D-Forsyth, a member of the subcommittee.

Methamphetamine use "is a very serious problem," she said, "but there are
people who need these medications for more than the sniffles."

Some state senators and Attorney General Roy Cooper have been pushing a
version of the bill that would put all tablets that have pseudoephedrine,
such as Sudafed, behind a pharmacist's counter.

Consumers would need photo identification to buy them, and they couldn't
buy more than 9grams - about a third of an ounce - a month without a
prescription.

Rural legislators in the House and some retailers are pushing an alternate
version that would affect only some tablets and would still allow them to
be sold from behind a grocer's counter or a convenience-store counter.

The bill would limit consumers to 9 grams a purchase but would not limit
the number of purchases a consumer could make.

Neither bill would affect gel caps or other liquid medications, although
legislators have talked about including those items.

The subcommittee was appointed last week to try to work out differences
between the versions, and the chairman, Rep. Rick Glazier, D-Cumberland,
held out hope yesterday that they could. "It is important that the groups
get together," he said. "It's unlikely that either bill in its current
form, in its exact form is going to pass committee."

Sheriffs and district attorneys are lobbying hard for the Senate version,
while some pharmaceutical companies and the N.C. Retail Merchants
Association are pushing hard for the House version.

Harry Kaplan, a lobbyist for Schering-Plough HealthCare Products Inc.,
which makes Claritin, told the subcommittee that it and other tablets
should continue to be sold at grocery stores because there are few other
decongestants that don't cause drowsiness.

"You are stuck. There's no alternative," Kaplan said.

Even the tighter regulations would keep 72 percent of pseudoephedrine
products on a typical grocery-store shelf, said Greg McLeod, a legislative
liaison for the N.C. Department of Justice.

Sen. John Snow, D-Cherokee, a retired District Court judge, was a primary
sponsor of the Senate version of the bill.

Snow said he was disappointed by the discussion at the House subcommittee
yesterday.

"People's inconvenience doesn't compare with kids who are sick with this
stuff and with people who are dying from it," he said.

Still, Parmon and others who support greater access to pseudoephedrine said
they are not soft on crimes involving methamphetamine.

"I don't want anyone to get the idea that we don't think this is a serious
problem in North Carolina," she said.

Authorities have found 185 methamphetamine labs in the state this year
through June 1, compared to 322 for all of 2004.