MLA METH BILL GAINING POLITICAL SUPPORT

A second Alberta MLA has put methamphetamine in his sights with a private
member's bill. West Yellowhead Tory Ivan Strang wants his legislature
colleagues to put strict controls on the sale of legal products used in the
manufacture of the illicit drug.

"I thought we'd put in a limiting act, and put these products behind the
counter," Strang said of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine products - common in
cold remedies - sold in grocery stores and drugstores.

Strang's idea is contained in Bill 204, the Pharmacy and Drug
(Methamphetamine Limiting) Amendment Act. It is the second of two private
member's bills - which means they don't automatically have government
support - aimed at the growing use of crystal meth in Alberta.

The other, Mary Ann Jablonski's Bill 202, is an act to allow parents to
force their drug-addicted kids into treatment.

"It's just coincidence that we both brought these forward at the same
time," Strang said.

But it's also reflective of the continuing political concern over the
impact of the drug, commonly known as speed, in Alberta.

"It's so lethal. Most young people think they are bulletproof and this
horrible addiction won't happen to them. And it does," Strang said, noting
that meth appears to have got its start in Alberta in his own riding about
five years ago.

"It was really in the Edson-Hinton-Drayton Valley corridor that we saw this
first."

Pharmacists are not enamoured by Bill 204, Strang admits. "They are saying
they've already done it voluntarily."

In July, the Alberta College of Pharmacists outlined a voluntary move by
drug dispensers to restrict access to the cold remedies illicitly used to
make meth.

That's not good enough, Strang said.

"What we're looking at is having it a bit more consistent. In some areas
there are no drugstores, you get these products from any local store."

And not all pharmacists have agreed to move the ephedrine and
pseudoephedrine products behind the counter.

Bill 204 has not yet been debated in the legislature.

"I think it has a good chance," Strang said. "Caucus is behind me. I've got
six or eight members who are going to speak to it, and that's always a good
yardstick."

Meanwhile, Education Minister Gene Zwozdesky has completed his own survey
of school boards' concern over meth.

While visiting the more than 70 school boards in Alberta earlier this year,
Zwozdesky included discussions of meth as the only non-education subject on
the agenda.

"Quite frankly it wasn't a question I had expected to ask, but having gone
through the first dozen or so meetings, and having had some of the boards
raise it with me, I thought I would just take it from there and ask the
remaining 50 or so (school boards).

"There were a significant number of school boards that indicated they were
aware of a rising problem with it - in the community, not necessarily in
the school. There were a few boards that didn't feel it had not yet arisen
in their communities as an issue.

"Most of them have a handle on the prevention side."