Arrow-right Camera
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Meth bill should track purchasers

The Spokesman-Review

Time is running out on the Washington Legislature if it wants to adopt a promising meth-fighting tool before the 2005 session ends. And methamphetamine is a foe that needs serious fighting.

The easily made substance destroys lives, property and communities. It generates crime. It consumes limited public resources that the state and its cities and counties could use for better purposes than cleaning up the social consequences left behind by meth-cooking.

Washington state has one of the worst meth problems in the nation, but there is reason to believe we could make positive steps with the enactment of a bill now awaiting action in the state Senate.

The first thing the Senate should do with House Bill 2266 is to remove the ill-advised amendments added during committee consideration.

As approved by the House 79-17, the measure would put restrictions on the retail sale of common cold medicines that contain the active ingredients meth makers need. The law already prohibits an individual customer from buying more than three packages of remedies such as Sudafed at a time.

HB 2266 would take those products off the shelf and put them behind a counter where a consumer would need a clerk to retrieve them. Purchasers would have to be 18 or older, and sellers would have to keep a log of who bought what and how much.

Yes, those restrictions would be inconvenient for retailers, much like the restrictions now applied to other products with social consequences – alcohol and tobacco, for example.

As amended in committee, the bill that’s expected on the Senate floor any day no longer requires the log, thus depriving authorities of a record to assist their investigations in meth-cooking cases. The amended bill also drops the retail controls for a product that has mixed active ingredients rather than just one. It takes more of the mixed-ingredient products to make meth, but it can still be done.

Rep. Tom Campbell, a Pierce County Republican and the prime sponsor of the bill, patterned it after measures that have shown success in Oklahoma and a growing number of states including Oregon. Those states report a noticeable decline in meth activity following enactment. Campbell also says he’s heard from authorities in the Vancouver and Tri-Cities areas that problems got worse along the border after Oregon toughened its laws, an indication that the neighbor state’s wrong-doers were feeling the heat.

No one bill can eradicate a social scourge such as the methamphetamine menace. That’s no excuse for failing to enact a measure that will help curb a significant part of the problem. HB 2266 could disrupt those who rely on the ease of going store to store for their key ingredient, purchasing three packages at a time with no way to have their excess buying tracked.

Although much of the meth that’s being abused is imported, it’s the local cooks who pose the greatest risk to communities. They leave honest, innocent landlords with thousands of dollars in decontamination bills. They touch off explosions and fires that threaten neighboring properties. They put their own children in danger.

Two years ago this month, law enforcement officials raided a northeast Spokane home where meth was being cooked. The woman who lived there told sheriff’s deputies that she made her children stay downstairs when meth was being cooked.

If that household rule was intended as a measure of child protection, it’s easy to see why the Senate has to come up with something better.