BILL FILED TO LIMIT SALES OF METH INGREDIENTS

Law Would Require Showing A Photo ID

RALEIGH -- Buying certain cold medicines would require showing a photo
identification to a licensed pharmacist, and no one without a prescription
could buy more than 9 grams of certain medicines within a 30-day period,
under a bill filed yesterday.

The bill would restrict access to tablets that include ephedrine or
pseudoephedrine, the active ingredients in products that relieve allergies,
congestion and other cold symptoms.

Those ingredients are also necessary for making methamphetamine, and
officials said that restricting access to the ingredients would help slow
the spread of the drug.

"If they can't get the key ingredient, they can't get the methamphetamine,"
Attorney General Roy Cooper said. "We have seen it reach a crisis point in
the Western and Midwestern states. We want to prevent it from becoming a
crisis in North Carolina."

The bill would apply to tablets, not liquid capsules.

Cooper, legislators and other officials have been pushing for ephedrine
restrictions for several months, though they did not offer a specific
proposal until yesterday. They said that public officials have historically
underestimated ephedrine as a drug.

"Had the people known that this capability was there, it would have been
controlled as a narcotic. It is so powerful," said Sen. John Snow,
D-Cherokee, a primary sponsor of the bill and a former District Court judge.

The bill faces some opposition from the N.C. Retail Merchants Association.
Fran Pres-ton, the group's president, said that the group supports the idea
of restricting access to ephedrine, but that retailers can do so as well as
pharmacists.

"If they (methamphetamine users) had to ask anybody for it, it would be a
significant deterrent," Preston said. "The consumer would be just as well
protected. The bad guy would be just as thwarted."

To do otherwise, Preston said, would unfairly restrict access to tablets.

"The consumer is not going to be able to get a product that he needs all
the time. We think that's a problem," she said.

Oklahoma passed a similar bill in April 2003, and officials there credit it
with helping to cut the number of meth labs by at least 70 percent. Other
bills have been filed in Arizona, Iowa, Missouri, North Dakota and other
states, as well as in the U.S. Senate.

"Just about every meth lab you see has blister packs of Sudafed," said
Sheriff Mark Shook of Watauga County, who came to Raleigh for the bill
filing. "You take pseudoephedrine away, you have no meth."

North Carolina's bill would also appropriate $836,000 for 13 new positions
at the N.C. Department of Justice. The positions would include eight
chemists or chemical technicians, four field agents, and a supervisor.

It would also toughen penalties for making meth in a multiunit dwelling,
such as an apartment, because of fumes emitted in the meth cooking process.