COLD PILLS ARE JUST PART OF METH WAR

Last year, we balked at placing limits on sales of the cold medicines that
crankheads use to make methamphetamine. The meth scourge is bad, but
enforcement should always target those doing wrong, not those doing right.

Then we saw the statistics. Last year, police in Iowa confiscated 1,155
meth labs. This year, even with restricted cold pill sales, they've seized
1,075 labs. That prompted Gov. Tom Vilsack to suggest more restrictions:
requiring a prescription for any Iowan to obtain pseudoephedrine. Sounded
good to us. Then we pulled the case file on Bradley Eugene Turner.

Turner is a career criminal whose career of choice lately seems to be
making meth. Quad-City police caught up with Turner running from a West
Lake Park family campground site that stunk of meth chemicals. Someone
alerted police, who found Turner and a toxic stew of ground up
pseudoephedrine and kerosene for making the drug.

His public rap sheet begins at age 15 with his discharge from Eldora in
1985. It goes on for one, two and three drunken driving convictions.
Domestic assault. Assault on a police officer. Multiple convictions for
driving with a suspended license. He was barred from driving, then arrested
for driving while barred. His first meth arrest shows up in 1997. He
received a 10-day jail term and $250 fine. In less than a month he was back
in jail on drug charges.

Two more drunken driving convictions. Bigger fines. Longer jail terms.

Finally, in 2001, he received a five-year prison term for leaving the scene
of an injury accident. He was paroled after 10 months, free for a month,
then back in jail on a serious assault charge.

By Nov. 2002, he's out on the street and caught again with drugs and given
a short jail stay and fine.

On May 27 this year, Coralville police caught him with meth chemicals. He
made bond and took off.

Thirty-three days later, police collared him running from the meth lab in
the West Lake Park campground. He was charged with possession of precursors
for making meth and jailed him on a $32,000 bond. He faced up to 15 years
in prison.

On July 8, he offered this note to Scott District Judge Douglas McDonald,
shared here verbatim: "I hope you will take a nuther look at my case. And
if any way reconsister the 30 days cont. and let me bond out. I'v been
charged with Rrocucors."

Court records indicate Judge McDonald reduced his bond that day to $9,750.

Turner took off again. He missed his next court appearance but was
apprehended in South Carolina. Now he's in an Iowa City jail cell facing
federal meth charges.

Turner's case shows that Iowa didn't get to be the No. 1 meth-making state
in the nation by having a crop of easily discouraged druggies.

Before we lock up all the cold pills, it appears there are a few holes in
Iowa's meth war plan that could be plugged to keep guys like Turner from
ever getting to a drug store after he'd been caught once. Or twice.

Even then, we're not sure locking up the cold pills would do much good.

There are plenty in Illinois. Turner's case proves Iowa drug dealers don't
need a driver's license to get there.