SALE OF DRUG INGREDIENTS TO BE LIMITED

Tough new rules affecting the sale of the chemicals that can make
methamphetamine are about to be introduced by the drug industry and backed
by police.

Richard Schurr, of the police national drug intelligence bureau, said a
meeting in Auckland last month with groups such as Medsafe, the Pharmacy
Guild and the Non-Prescription Medicine Association was partly in response
to directions by the United Nations to create international protocols and
conventions over trading chemical products.

While no one will reveal details of the options to be considered, the
Herald has been told that methods used in Australia that restrict the sale
of drugs will be considered.

Across the Tasman, the popular cold drug Pseudofed cannot be sold in
packets of 60 or 90 tablets.

The product contains pseudoephedrine, the substance used to make
methamphetamine, or speed.

The smaller packets are kept out of easy reach and must be dispensed by a
pharmacist.

An Australian national drugs strategic unit spokesman, Steve Vaughan, said
the company Pfizer had agreed nearly 18 months ago to stop selling the
large Pseudofed packets in Australia.

Some pharmacists asked for photo identification before they sold anything
containing pseudoephedrine.

For the past five years, the Australian pharmaceutical industry has had a
code of conduct restricting who can buy certain substances, preventing them
from being paid for in cash and requiring that courier companies deliver
them to specified business addresses.

Mr Vaughan said the rules were working, but a difficult area to control was
the sale of substances through the internet. Australian methamphetamine
manufacturers had bought the chemicals for speed on international websites,
including New Zealand sites.

"If you go on international sites it is quite widely advertised."

Mr Schurr said methamphetamine, a highly addictive stimulant that works on
the central nervous system, first came to notice in New Zealand during the
early 1990s, and the first methamphetamine laboratory in this country was
found near Timaru in 1996.

Last year, police discovered 41 laboratories, compared with nine in 2000.
Some were located in car boots or in bathrooms.

Most were found in the area from Hamilton northwards.

The drug bureau says the trade can provide manufacturers and suppliers with
vast profits.

Those involved can turn chemicals worth a few hundred dollars into $200,000
in just a few days.

On the street, speed sells for up to $100 a gram.

It is made out of ephedrine, which comes from a plant but can also be made
synthetically and is mixed with other substances.

Most chemicals to make the drug come from organised groups of shoppers,
paid by the methamphetamine cooks to travel around pharmacies until they
have bought hundreds of tablets containing pseudoephedrine.

Mr Schurr said companies had to be licensed to buy the chemicals used to
make speed but there were ways around it.

He said New Zealand needed ways to address the problem with drugs being
sold to make speed.

But there needed to be room for people to still go about their business.
David Jones, a spokesman for the Pharmacy Guild, said there were 42
products sold in pharmacies that contained substances used to make speed.
Examples were Actifed and Telfast. Pharmacists would be suspicious of
anyone who bought more than one packet of these drugs.

Pharmacies had been exposed to burglaries and raids and staff had been put
under a lot of pressure to sell them, he said.

Auckland pharmacies the Herald spoke to were not stocking cold-tablet type
products in packs of more than 30 tablets and had a policy of asking for
identification and restricting sales.

Products containing codeine, such as Panadol, are available in packs of up
to 100 tablets but are usually held behind the pharmacy counter. The
smaller cold-treatment packs are often on open shelves.