SUPPORT GROWING FOR FEDERAL LEGISLATION TO CURB METH ABUSE

WASHINGTON - The days of buying certain cold remedies off the drug
store shelf may soon be gone, a casualty of the methamphetamine epidemic.

Picking up on laws already passed in more than a dozen states,
Congress is thinking about requiring the nation's retailers to sell
medicines like Sudafed and Nyquil behind the pharmacy counter to make
it harder to get the ingredients needed to make highly addictive meth.

A similar law in Kansas took effect this week and a bill in Missouri
is awaiting the governor's signature.

Retailers, who once resisted the idea as burdensome for consumers, now
seem ready to go along with it in hopes of avoiding a tangle of state
regulations. This month, a Senate committee will hold hearings on a
bill that places sharp new restrictions on the sale of cold and
allergy pills containing pseudoephedrine, which is used to "cook" meth
in makeshift labs across the country.

"There's a lot of public pressure to do something," said Sen. Jim
Talent, R-Mo., who together with Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-Calif.,
introduced a bill to limit the sale of cold medicines. "I think
retailers - most of them - do not want to sell their products to meth
cooks and they know they have to do something."

Their bill, modeled on an Oklahoma law that took effect in April 2004,
requires medicines with pseudoephedrine to be sold only by a
pharmacist or pharmacy personnel. Customers would have to show a photo
ID, sign a log and be limited to 9 grams - or about 300 30-milligram
pills - in a 30-day period. The government can make exceptions in
areas where pharmacies are not easily accessible.

Some stores, like Target and Wal-Mart, have already adopted their own
guidelines to move cold products behind pharmacy counters. And last
month, the National Association of Chain Drug Stores endorsed a set of
principles that includes limiting access to the drugs.

"We do think it's time for a federal solution," said Mary Ann Wagner,
the association's vice president of pharmacy regulatory affairs. "It's
just becoming so complicated when you look at a map across the country
and no two laws are anything alike."

Even the drug industry has not raised major objections to federal
legislation. Jay Kosminsky, a spokesman for Pfizer, which makes
Sudafed, said the company supports having a national standard that
would put pseudoephedrine behind the counter.

"I do think there really is an opportunity for a national consensus on
this issue and I don't think there was a year ago," Kosminsky said.

Talent said he and Feinstein plan to unveil a new version of their
bill this month that addresses some of the concerns of retailers. The
updated measure would, for example, carve out exemptions for
children's cold medicines, where the pseudoephedrine is too difficult
to extract.

House Majority Whip Roy Blunt, R-Mo., is revising a similar bill in
the House and has made meth enforcement one of his top priorities.

The biggest problem for retailers, Wagner said, is requiring a
pharmacist to sell the medication. She said store personnel should be
able to make sales as long as they are under the pharmacist's
supervision.

The effect on sales is a key issue. In Oklahoma, where pharmacists
must supervise transactions, cold medicine sales have dropped. Sales
have not suffered in Illinois, which has less restrictive rules and
allows other store workers to dispense the drugs.

The Bush administration has not taken a formal position on the
Talent-Feinstein bill. But John Horton, associate deputy director for
state and local affairs for the White House Office of National Drug
Control Policy, said early signs show state laws are having a positive
effect.

An ONDCP report issued last month found there has been a 50 percent
drop in the number of meth labs in Oklahoma and Oregon, two of the
first states to enact laws restricting the purchase of
pseudoephedrine-containing products.

"We know that when we prevent the methamphetamine cooks from getting
the ingredients they need to make the meth, that the problem becomes
smaller," Horton said.

Horton estimates about a third of the meth comes from small labs in
the United States, while two-thirds is smuggled in bulk from big labs
outside the country, mainly Mexico.

The meth problem is particularly bad in the Midwest, where rural areas
provide cover for the pungent chemical odor coming from meth labs. In
Missouri, law enforcement officials seized more than 2,700 meth labs
last year, more than any other state.

"The labs themselves are a huge problem in communities," Talent said.
"They are toxic waste dumps, they're fire hazards, they're threats to
children and they're overwhelming law enforcement."

Lt. Steve Dalton, supervisor of the Combined Ozarks
Multi-Jurisdictional Enforcement Team, an anti-drug police task force
in Branson, Mo., calls the meth trade the worst drug problem he's ever
seen.

"A federal law is not going to wipe it out, but if we can get away
from the cleanup of these meth labs, it's going to free up a lot of
our time and we can target those that are bringing it in from across
the border," Dalton said.