COUNTY OPENS NEW FRONT IN WAR

Meth Ordinance Goes Into Effect

On Saturday, Crow Wing County's battle against methamphetamine was waged on
a new front.

With the dawn of a new year, a county-wide ordinance went into effect
mandating drugs used to make meth, called precursor drugs, be displayed and
offered for sale behind a checkout counter, within a pharmacy or other
controlled counter where the public is not permitted. Violation of the
ordinance is a misdemeanor crime.

The meth precursors are drugs or products containing as its major active
ingredient ephedrine, pseudoephedrine, phenylpropanolamine, or any of their
salts or optical isomers. Products include Sudafed, Pharmacist Value
Suphedrine, Mini-Thins, Max-Alert, and other diet pills or alert tablets
often sold on the counters of convenience stores with any number of other
chemicals, according to Crow Wing County's MethWatch Web site.

The idea behind the ordinance, said Lakes Area Drug Investigative Division
officer Andy Galles, is to combat meth manufacturing at its source, the
ingredients.

"It's going to have a huge effect for us, locally," Galles said. "It's
going to take extreme workload off what we do. Without precursors, the
pills, it makes it very hard for people to cook meth. You need that pill to
make meth. You've got to have that pill."

Galles said several stores prior to the ordinance going into effect Jan. 1
already had put such precursor drugs behind counters or in locked cases. He
also noted that many stores had voluntarily put limits on the number of
products a customer can buy in a day well before the ordinance passed.

"It really limits the amount of illegal purpose behind it. It's not
stopping people with a cold from buying it," Galles said. "What we're
deterring, our major goal, is to make sure these people aren't brazen
enough to ask for four or five boxes."

Gordy Langness, an employee at the Holiday Station Store on Mill Avenue in
Brainerd, said his convenience store has always kept ephedrine products
behind the counter and limited the number a customer can purchase in a day
to two.

"That way we can see who's buying and how much," Langness said. "They use
it for different things: women for weight loss, guys to keep awake, and the
legitimate use of it. Then there's the ones who are probably going to make
it to make meth."

Langness said he knew of the new county-wide ordinance prohibiting the sale
of precursors but wasn't aware when it was going into effect. He said as
far as the sale of sinus medications like Sudafed, his store doesn't have a
problem of people buying several boxes at a time.

The ordinance should have an effect on not just Crow Wing County, but area
counties as well. Galles said people who come to the county to buy
precursors are typically from other counties who buy here and take it back
to their homes.

"It's going to have a trickle down effect in other areas," Galles said.

He also said Crow Wing County's adoption of an ordinance regulating the
sale of precursors has received state-wide attention, and he is hopeful the
state, as a few other states have done, passes legislation with similar
intention in the upcoming session.

"We're definitely on forefront of what's going to be a domino effect,"
Galles said.