MEDICINE: SHAKY OPPOSITION

Some chain stores have done it, a few municipalities and states have done
it and now the federal government is talking about doing it, too: Turning
certain cold medicines into "somewhat controlled" substances.

It seems that people who walk into a drugstore or grocery and walk out with
25 boxes of Sudafed or Tylenol Flu are not battling a world-class virus,
but often are crawling off into their metham-phetamine labs and making one
of the most dangerous drugs out there.

Under new proposed laws, those cold medicines, ones containing
pseudoephedrines, would require you to show identification before you
purchase them. They'd be tucked behind the counter at the pharmacy. You
couldn't buy them by the truckload.

This is where the drug war meets the drug industry, and the battlefield is
the corner drugstore.

Pharmaceutical companies don't want to lose sales, so they argue that
consumers will be inhibited from purchasing these medi-cations because they
might have to stand in line at the counter for them.

Nonsense. The drug industry is on paper-thin ice here and its opposition
smacks of self-interest.

Methamphetamines are the crack cocaine of the decade -- easy to make, easy
to sell and wildly addictive. Drug enforcers, not pharmaceutical spokesmen
sitting in their windowless offices, are the ones who uncover mounds of
antihistamine packaging at meth cookhouses in the woods, poor
neighborhoods, attics, apartments and hotels.

Pharmaceutical manufacturers aren't the ones battling cranked-up, gun-
wielding nuts who have lost their grip on reality.

Those cooking the toxic stew are also handling such volatile chemicals as
methanol, ether, benzene, methylene chloride and toluene. Other toxins like
muriatic acid and ammonia are commonly used. These labs become such
contaminated environments that cleanup crews have to wear Tyvek suits and
respirators when they enter them.

Anyone who has a garden variety cold or flu won't need more than the 366
pills per month that they'd be restricted to under pending federal legislation.

As for those who need more than that, you can bet they're up to something
and that someone is going to be hurt in the process.