Bill targeting meth makers requires prescriptions for some cold medicines

A bill in the works for the upcoming session of the state Legislature aims to thwart methamphetamine makers by making legal drugs with certain ingredients available by prescription only.

The bill by Sen. Sheila Leslie, D-Reno, will require customers to have a prescription from a doctor to buy cold medicines that contain ephedrine, pseudoephedrine or phenylpropanolamine.

Medicines with those ingredients are sold only in limited quantities from behind the counter at pharmacies and require buyers to sign a registry because of a law approved during the 2007 legislative session.

Adding the prescription requirement, Leslie said, would reduce instances of "smurfing," the practice of buying as much product as the law allows at one pharmacy before moving on to another and using an assumed name to buy more.

"Smurfing and meth have become a No. 1 law enforcement problem in the West," Leslie said.

Restrictions Leslie wants to add are already in place in Oregon and Mississippi.

Officials in Oregon say the number of "meth instances" reported has fallen from 191 in 2005, the year before the restriction went into place, to 12 in 2009. Mississippi just approved the restriction in July.

"The proof is in the evidence, and I think the evidence is clear," said Neil Rombardo, the Carson City district attorney, who is working with Leslie on the bill. "Oregon and Mississippi have done it, and it has been very successful for them."

Rombardo and Leslie are scheduled to make a presentation on the subject at
10:30 a.m. today during a conference at the Golden Nugget.

In the meantime, they have been meeting with industry officials to tamp down skepticism and win support.

Larry Matheis, executive director of the Nevada State Medical Association, said the group views the proposal "very favorably" for now.

"Can this be done without becoming really a huge burden on patients and on the physicians' practices?" Matheis said. "I think it can."

Mary Lau, president and CEO of the Retail Association of Nevada, said she has "a lot of questions" about the bill.

"The problem with it is it makes it extremely difficult for people to get legitimate cold products," Lau said.

Laws already in place to track the sale of ingredients that can be used to methamphetamine have a mixed record of performance.

They are credited with making it more difficult and expensive for producers to acquire ingredients.

But they are blamed for bringing a new class of middlemen into the illegal trade, people who engage in smurfing to get the products and then sell them at a big markup to producers.

Although methamphetamine lab busts in Nevada have fallen from 125 in 2003 to 10 in 2009, the drug trade is still a problem, Leslie and Rombardo said.

Leslie said middlemen acquire medicine containing precursors from Nevada pharmacies and sell them to producers in California, who manufacture methamphetamine and sell it back into Nevada.

"I see this as a real solution to reducing the supply" of methamphetamine precursors, Leslie said. "We're making it harder for people to circumvent the law."

Contact reporter Benjamin Spillman at bspillman@
reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3861.