CdA toughens cold medicine rules
On the advice of police, Coeur d’Alene officials have expanded a city ordinance limiting sales of cold and allergy medications that can be used to make methamphetamine, even as Idaho legislators consider statewide regulations.
Liquid, liquid capsule and gel capsule formulations were added to an ordinance approved last fall requiring medications containing pseudoephedrine to be sold only in limited quantities from behind store counters, City Attorney Mike Gridley said.
The change was made after Idaho State Police officials reviewed the new ordinance, which was the first in North Idaho and one of the first in the state, Gridley said. “They came to us and said, ‘How come you didn’t include capsules?’ ” he said. “The police said, ‘You’re leaving a loophole here.’ “
The move attempts to stifle home methamphetamine labs, which experts say account for about 20 percent of meth production. Increasingly sophisticated meth “cooks” have found ways to generate the powerful stimulant from a wide range of products containing pseudoephedrine, said ISP Detective Terry Morgan.
“You know the Vicks inhalers? They can extract the pseudoephedrine out of that,” he said.
Thwarting such efforts statewide is the goal of a bill that passed the Idaho Senate Judiciary and Rules Committee this week. The bill would require stores to keep products containing pseudoephedrine behind counters. It would also require purchasers of the medication to show valid photo identification, and limit sales to 9 grams of the decongestant drug, or about 300 Sudafed brand pills, in a 30-day period.
Coeur d’Alene’s ordinance limits buyers to three packages. The expanded ordinance went into effect two weeks ago.
If the bill passes, Idaho would join 37 other states, including Oregon, Washington and Montana, in limiting sales of the over-the-counter cold and allergy medications.
But many local retailers who sell the drugs said they voluntarily made the changes now required by city ordinance or potential state law. Some stores restricted access and quantities months ago because they saw the changes coming, said Barry Feely, owner of several area pharmacies.
“It’s putting a law behind what’s already taking place,” Feely said. “We pulled everything back behind the counter. It’s kind of a pain for the retailer, but the goal is to decrease its availability. It’s just one more way to put a barrier up.”
Other stores limited sales of potential methamphetamine ingredients out of more practical concerns. Problems with shoplifters forced Super 1 Foods stores to put pseudoephedrine products behind counters more than a year ago, a manager said.
And some stores simply stopped carrying the medications altogether to avoid attracting certain kinds of patrons.
“It was a problem having the druggies coming in,” said Ron Gittel, owner of Gittel’s Grocery in Coeur d’Alene. “If you have it behind the counter, it won’t sell anyway.”
Ordinary matches were another casualty of the drug trade, Gittel said. He no longer sells or provides books of matches to his customers. Meth cooks cut off the striker strips on matchbooks and soak them in alcohol to make red phosphorous, a component of methamphetamine, ISP’s Morgan said.
“That got rid of the people that were coming in five times a day to buy matches,” Gittel said.
So far, efforts to cut the number of home meth labs seem to be working, Morgan said. In 2005, 15 meth labs were seized in Kootenai County, down from 19 the previous year and a high of 90 in 2000, ISP statistics showed.
“It has had a big effect,” Morgan said.