PROPOSED METH LAW WILL COST, PHARMACISTS SAY

West Virginia pharmacists say citizens will have to expect Sudafed and
similar decongestants to be more expensive with fewer varieties available
if lawmakers approve Gov. Joe Manchin's bill to fight the creation and use
of methamphetamines.

But they and legislative leaders say the bill is needed, although not
necessarily in the same form as the governor proposed.

Manchin's bill is based on a law in Oklahoma that limits the amount of
products containing pseudoephedrine, a key ingredient in meth, that
customers can buy at one time. It requires them to be dispensed by a
pharmacist and for customers to produce identification and sign for them.

Although Manchin said in his State of the State address that the Oklahoma
law reduced the number of meth labs in that state by 60 percent, other
reports say the reduction is closer to 80 percent. It has been so
successful that many states and the federal government are considering
legislation based on it, but pharmacists warn that it will come at a cost.

"It creates another burden for pharmacists to deal with," said Keith
Foster, a pharmacist at Colony Drug and Wellness Center in Beckley. "There
are expenses involved that probably will drive up the price of the products."

Richard Stevens, a lobbyist for the West Virginia Pharmacists Association,
said that anytime drugs are put behind the pharmacy counter instead of
being openly available on drug store shelves, their costs go up.

"You can only have registered technicians behind the counter, so these are
the higher-paid positions in a pharmacy," he said. "Then you've got the
inventory control. You've got your reporting to distributors and
wholesalers. The DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) is involved there. Then you
have to do the reporting of each transaction to the repository."

But Stevens said it's too soon to determine how much the cost of the drugs
will increase.

"That depends on the individual pharmacies and what their operating costs
are because these are not going to be products that are going to be
reimbursed by insurance companies," he said. "You might find some
pharmacies that may just choose to carry fewer products, since they have to
put them behind the counter."

But Stevens, Foster and Barbara Smith, a pharmacist at Staats Pharmacy in
Spencer, said they support Manchin's effort to reduce the proliferation of
dangerous meth labs across the state.

"Innocent people are getting hurt, and lives are being destroyed," Smith
said. "It would seem to be at epidemic proportions right now. I do feel
there needs to be control of it somehow to track sales."

Lawmakers are just beginning to take a good look at the bill Manchin
submitted to them last week.

"Before the week's out, I'm sure we'll have some discussions," Senate
President Earl Ray Tomblin, D-Logan, said.

Last month's special session got some major issues out of the way for
lawmakers, so they can concentrate now on legislation like the meth bill,
he said.

House Judiciary Chairman Jon Amores, D-Kanawha, said he expects a working
group on the bill to meet by the end of the week to consider some problems
that pharmacists have found in Manchin's proposal.

"Some of that's very technical," Amores said. "They need experts in the
field to kind of educate us on some of that. I think the point of that
education isn't to stop the bill, but it's hopefully to create a better
bill, one that can be practically implemented."

Foster said one example of the problem pharmacists might have with the bill
is that it would prohibit a person from purchasing more than nine grams of
pseudoephedrine or similar substances within a 30-day period, but keeping
track of that could be difficult. He said each tablet of Sudafed and
similar products contains 30 milligrams of the drug, so it would take 300
tablets to make up nine grams.

House Minority Leader Charles Trump, R-Morgan, said lawmakers would "have
to strike a balance between action to address that problem and the
legitimate uses that many people make of Sudafed and that related family of
drugs, which apparently are real effective for the common cold."

House Speaker Bob Kiss, D-Raleigh, said, "I'm sure we can find a way to
pass it in a form that's acceptable to the governor."

Manchin said he's willing to consider reasonable changes to his bill.

"We're willing to work in any common sense manner in order to reduce the
epidemic proportion of users and meth labs themselves," he said. "Every
time we send police in, we send law enforcement into harm's way."

Manchin added that lawmakers must do something this year.

"It's just too readily available and too cheap a drug, and it has
disastrous effects on society as a whole," he said. "It's horribly,
horribly, horribly addictive."

Foster said pharmacists agree with that but regret what the changes will
mean for their customers.

"Ultimately, it's the patients who will suffer for the few people who are
illegitimately using the ingredients," he said.