METH LAB INGREDIENTS EASY TO PURCHASE IN STORES

It Was An Odd Shopping List, But No One Seemed To Notice.

Brake cleaner, rock salt, iodine, three boxes of cold pills, paint thinner
- -- and four other ingredients used to make methamphetamine. The list was
shown to six employees of a major discount retailer in North Fayette,
including a pharmacist. They simply pointed the customer to the correct aisles.

This is the sort of thing that keeps federal agents awake at night.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration is now asking retailers to teach
their employees how to spot people who buy large quantities of the everyday
products that can be cooked and combined to make meth, a highly addictive
stimulant that is inhaled in powder form or injected as a liquid.

"We're seeking voluntary compliance," said Special Agent Andy Petyak, who
runs the DEA's anti-meth efforts in Pittsburgh. "We're saying that if
somebody comes into a Home Depot and buys six gallons of acetone (a
solvent), give us a call."

That will lead to more busts for law enforcement agents, but it's no cure
for the plague of meth production, which has become something of a cottage
industry in cities and states across the nation.

"It had been tried here," said Mark Woodward, spokesman for the Oklahoma
Bureau of Narcotics, a sort of state version of the DEA. A decade of
education and voluntary limits on meth ingredients helped police find more
meth labs, but it didn't stop their spread. "It does nothing to actually
stem the tide."

That tide turned for Oklahoma law enforcement a year ago Wednesday. That's
when the state became the nation's first to put pills containing ephedrine
and pseudoephedrine -- widely used in cold and allergy pills and essential
to making meth -- behind the counter at pharmacies. Now, if you want to buy
the pills in Oklahoma, you have to show a driver's license and sign a
ledger at the pharmacist's window.

Meth production in the state, which had increased 1,200 percent during the
1990s, fell by more than 50 percent in the first 11 months after the law
passed. In February, for instance, 39 meth labs were busted in the state,
down from 120 in February 2004. Meth cooks caught stealing pseudoephedrine
in Oklahoma's neighboring states have told police, "I can't get this in
Oklahoma," Woodward said.

The DEA has no illusions of stopping the spread of meth labs in Pittsburgh
just by educating store clerks, Petyak said.

Agents in Kansas City, Mo., uncover six to seven labs a week, and though
the problem is not nearly as severe in Western Pennsylvania, it is a
growing one.

The number of meth labs found by state police has ballooned from 19 in 2001
to 128 last year. In February, authorities raided a suspected meth lab in
Shadyside, arresting an off-duty Ross police officer and three others.
Police uncovered labs in Beltzhoover and McKees Rocks last year and in Mt.
Washington and Brighton Heights in 2003.

Methamphetamine labs, once found only in the nation's rural West, have
become smaller and gradually are migrating eastward and into cities. The
smallest labs -- called box labs -- can fit in a backpack, the trunk of a
car or can quickly be set up in a motel room, according to the U.S. Justice
Department.

State Reps. John Evans and Matthew Good, both Erie Republicans, have
proposed five bills to restrict the purchase of pseudoephedrine. The level
of regulation varies from limiting the amount of pseudoephedrine a person
can buy to adopting Oklahoma's system of keeping the medicine behind
pharmacists' counters.

State Sen. Bob Regola, R-Hempfield, says he plans to introduce legislation
similar to Oklahoma's.

"It's definitely an issue, and it's something I'm very concerned about," he
said yesterday. "Something has to be done."

Regola said he's reviewing the regulations in other states and that his
proposal will aim to restrict access to certain products without hurting
retailers. Since April 6, 2004, Arkansas, Iowa, Kentucky and Tennessee
passed legislation mirroring Oklahoma's, and Kansas lawmakers are poised to
do the same within weeks. The governor of Oregon skipped the legislature
and enacted restrictions similar to Oklahoma's through an emergency
executive order, Woodward said.

If the General Assembly pursues legislation like Oklahoma's, it better be
ready for the pressure from drug company lobbyists, Woodward said.
Pharmaceutical lobbyists, a giant force in public policy, urged sticking to
"education, voluntary limits on product purchases, stuff we already tried,"
Woodward said.

"All their arguments were pretty weak, but they had a lot of money at
stake," he said. "We had seen a 1,200 percent increase in the purchase of
pseudoephedrine. . We had not seen a 1,200 percent increase in the number
of head colds."

Drug companies said they were being targeted while the makers of other
ingredients were left unregulated. But other products are useless without
pseudoephedrine, Woodward said. Cooking meth basically entails removing the
oxygen and hydrogen molecules from cold pills, then turning the remaining
product into a powder.

It's a volatile process that can blow up a house or hotel if something goes
wrong, and contaminate a neighborhood with fumes. Fear of a meth lab next
door isn't what finally pushed the bill through in Oklahoma, though.

State Troopers Nik Green, Matthew Evans and David "Rocky" Eales died trying
to arrest meth addicts. Opponents backed down after supporters proposed
naming the law in their honor and their widows began sitting in on
committee hearings, Woodward said.

In the Pittsburgh area, DEA officials have begun meeting with managers from
the local branches of retailers such as Wal-Mart, Target, Home Depot and
Sheetz, and pharmacy chains such as Eckerd and CVS.

At some stores in Cranberry, informational fliers containing a list of
products already have been posted in areas where employees congregate,
Petyak said.

The DEA has launched similar campaigns in Erie County and rural areas of
the state where meth labs are more common, said James Harper, assistant
special agent in charge of the DEA's Pittsburgh office.

Mike Cortez, vice president and chief legal counsel for Altoona-based
Sheetz, sat in on a meeting with the DEA and other law enforcement agencies
two weeks ago.

He called the meeting "eye-opening" and came away amazed at the lengths
people will go to operate meth labs. The problem, Cortez said, is coming up
with a sensible plan that balances the needs of customers and preventing abuse.

"I can tell you without hesitation that we don't have all the answers yet"
Cortez said. "This is a relatively new phenomenon for us, and what we have
done so far is to sit down and figure out exactly what the issue is."