The War on ‘Sudafed’ Grows

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Rep. Ed Blackmon, D-Canton, believes his bill will help save lives.

by Adam Lynch
February 3, 2010

The Mississippi Senate passed a bill Tuesday requiring drugs containing pseudoephedrine be sold by prescription only. The bill is a sister bill to House Bill 512, a constitutional amendment authored by Rep. Ed Blackmon, D-Canton, which also targets a common ingredient in over-the-counter cold and allergy medicine.

The drug is also a major component in the production of illegal methamphetamine, aka meth.

Rep. Steve Holland, D-Plantersville, last week described to the House the damage meth use had wrought upon his family, complaining that his brother had died from a meth overdose and that another relative was currently an addict.

"Three days after we buried my brother's ashes, my youngest brother got caught for the second time (using it), and my mother—that honorable woman who went though the greatest trial a woman can go through—said my brother is living but already dead," Holland said.

The House bill passed with a wide margin of support.

The bills are apparently popular among law enforcement officials, who argue that a major component of combating meth use in the state involves discouraging production.

"I am confident because of this legislation, meth labs will drop dramatically in this state," Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics Director Marshall Fisher told the Jackson Free Press. "The state of Oregon is our gold standard on proving the effectiveness of laws like this. Last year, Oregon had a total of 10 meth labs. Out of that 10, about eight of them were dump sites where people delivered the key ingredient from other states. The others were sites where the makers went to other states to collect the pseudoephedrine—a process we call 'Smurfing.'"

Advocates for drug manufacturers say the Mississippi bill will inconvenience legitimate consumers of allergy and cold medicine, however.

"We are disappointed that the Mississippi Senate chose to overlook consumer sentiment and passed a bill today that will significantly impact how cold and allergy sufferers access some of their medicines," said Consumer Healthcare Products Association President Linda Suydam in a Tuesday statement. "Under this legislation, if only half of those Mississippians who rely on these medicines are now forced to visit a doctor or obtain a prescription for these cold and allergy medicines containing pseudoephedrine, the cost to the health-care system would be over $7 million."

Suydam added that the state could potentially lose more than $500,000 in annual sales revenue and add costs to the state's Medicaid program resulting from newly required doctor visits for the drugs.

Fisher said plenty of alternative medicines are available that neither require a doctor visit or pseudoephedrine.

"There are a multitude of other products out there. There's Sudafed PE, which doesn't contain pseudoephedrine, but that's only one example. There's plenty to choose from, and one of those alternatives has got to work," Fisher said.

CHPA contends, however, that the bill places an unnecessary burden on Mississippians, and offered "a better and more effective solution" to address the state's meth production problem.

"Electronic tracking of over-the-counter medicines containing pseudoephedrine serves as a more effective, less costly alternative, and one that eight states have adopted to fight domestic meth production, while maintaining consumer access to these medicines," Suydam stated.

The federal Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act of 2005 provides an e-tracking tool that law enforcement and pharmacists can use to follow the trail of pseudoephedrine transportation across state lines. Fisher said he was unimpressed with the e-tracking results in other states, however.

"There's an argument that we should have this electronic tracking system if they're willing to pay for it, and we do want to look at any alternative to help us with this issue, but e-tracking has been tried in other states, Fisher said.

"One state currently trying it is Kentucky. They've been using it since May '08, and they had 716 meth lab busts last year, compared to Oregon's 10 labs. I'm kind of simple-minded—but do the math."

Gov. Haley Barbour will likely sign one of the pseudoephedrine-restricting bills coming out of the House or Senate, according to a press statement his office released on Tuesday.

"I commend the Mississippi Legislature for its swift action to address the methamphetamine problem in this state. I look forward to signing House Bill 512, which will make it more difficult to obtain the ingredients for this drug that tears families apart and harms many of our communities," Barbour wrote.

"Meth labs threaten public safety, and I don't think there is any doubt we will see a drop in the number of labs in our state."

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