METH ADDICTION HEADED OFF WITH LAW

Somewhere in Oklahoma today, there is at least one man, woman, or child who
has not been exposed and possibly addicted to methamphetamine who would
have been had the legislature not passed House Bill 2176 restricting the
sale of certain forms of pseudoephedrine.

I do not know this person's name, and I do not know how they will use their
life from this point forward, but I feel certain that at least one of these
persons exists.

Your editorial June 30 points out that this legislation doesn't address the
real problem of the importation of methamphetamine from Mexico. Granted.

Please realize that Oklahoma's meth problem and Oklahoma's meth lab problem
are not the same thing; in fact, the latter is a subset of the former.

This bill was aimed at curbing stopping the 12,000 percent increase in meth
labs which we've witnessed since 1994, and at ending the ease with which
this drug can be made in just minutes and exposed to an even-increasing
population. These Mexican drug organizations you allude to are very real; I
have seen them, and I have prosecuted them.

They operate under cover of cultural barriers in some of Oklahoma's most
rural areas, and to date law enforcement has been largely unable to
infiltrate and target them because so many resources have been monopolized
by these small but dangerous meth labs.

This bill asks Oklahomans to either use the gal cap or liquid form of
pseudoephedrine, or undergo the minor inconvenience of buying from a
pharmacy. Placing codeine cough syrups in pharmacies 30 or so years ago, or
for that matter heroin and cocaine in pharmacies 90 years ago, no doubt
inconvenienced law abiding citizens, as do most criminal laws aimed at
regulating the conduct of a few.

The payoff is the 70 percent reduction we saw immediately in the seizure of
meth labs, and the freed law enforcement resources which can now turn to
the meth trafficking problem you correctly point to.

SCOTT ROWLAND

Oklahoma City