States are also doing their own part to reduce the demand for pseudoephedrine. Oklahoma, for example, has seen a large drop in the number of home-grown methamphetamine labs since the implementation of House Bill 2176, the Trooper Nik Green, Rocky Eales and Matthew Evans Act. The law does not require a doctor's prescription for pseudoephedrine, but does make it a Schedule V (restricted) medication; the law also requires pharmacies to keep the drug behind the counter, make purchasers sign a log, and limit purchases to no more than 9 grams per month, “much more than one taking the full recommended dosage during that time period would need,” Mr. Wright noted at the hearing.
Before the bill was signed into law last April, state law enforcement authorities seized an averaged of 92 meth labs each month. That number had dropped by 32 by August.
Meth labs do continue to operate, however, because of pharmacies not enforcing the law strictly enough. In addition, smugglers bring the drug in from surrounding states, and criminals go to more than one pharmacy to obtain the drug–staying under the legal limit at each store but obtaining much more on the whole.
That latter practice, known as “smirfing,” should be stopped when Oklahoma implements a statewide computerized system for pharmacists to find out who has purchased the drug and in what amounts, Mr. Wright said.
A pharmacy representative urged subcommittee members to be cautious about copying the Oklahoma law.
“Raising barriers for consumers to access pseudoephedrine is a short-term solution to a long-term problem,” said Mary Ann Wagner, vice president for pharmacy regulatory affairs at the National Association of Chain Drug Stores, in Alexandria, Va. “The same results can be accomplished without the extreme steps taken in Oklahoma.”
A representative for the supermarket industry was even more forceful. “For our industry, a Schedule V approach is very troublesome,” said Joseph R. Herrens, who serves as senior vice president for government affairs at Marsh Supermarkets, in Indianapolis.
That's because an overwhelming majority of grocery stores in the United States do not have a pharmacy department” and therefore could not comply with the requirement to keep the drug behind a counter.
“Therefore, under the Oklahoma model … [most grocery stores] could not sell the pseudoephedrine products that our customers expect us to carry to meet their shopping needs.”
And even if the store does have a pharmacy department, it is not always open all the hours that the rest of the store is, especially in the case of a 24-hour grocery store, he continued.
“Therefore, even if the store is open for business, if the pharmacy department is not open or if the pharmacist is not on duty, sales of cough and cold products would not be permitted, and our customers would have to shop elsewhere.”
To help with that problem, Pfizer Inc., the maker of Sudafed–an over-the-counter cold medicine containing pseudoephedrine–recently began marketing Sudafed PE, a new version of Sudafed that contains phenyl-ephrine. Pfizer also will continue to offer the old version of the drug.
Another idea that was discussed at the hearing was getting rid of the federal “blister pack” exemption for pseudoephedrine. The exemption allows retailers to sell unlimited quantities of the drug as long as it is packaged in blister packs.
Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.) has proposed legislation to end that exemption.
