Meth Fight Becoming Automatic

By Joanie Baker, Messenger-Inquirer, Owensboro, Ky.

May 1–Starting today, some local pharmacies will begin logging on to the statewide program that electronically tracks pseudoephedrine purchases in all 120 Kentucky counties.

Officials hope the program, MethCheck, will have the same success as a similar program in Oklahoma that reduced meth labs by 93 percent in one year.

On Wednesday, local pharmacists and pharmacy techs received training on the system that can prohibit the sale of the cold medicine used to manufacture methamphetamine if the customer is trying to purchase more than the legal amount.

The legal limit for purchases is 9 grams per month — roughly the equivalent of two 15-dose boxes of 24-hour Claritin D, three 10-dose boxes of Aleve Cold & Sinus or six 24-dose boxes of Sudafed.

Until recently, each pharmacy was responsible for keeping a log available for law enforcement review of customers’ identification information, signatures and amount of pseudoephedrine they have purchased.

In Daviess County, hundreds of people have been charged with unlawful possession of a meth precursor as a result of local departments honing in on the logs and keeping careful watch of purchases.

Van Ingram, compliance branch manager with the Kentucky Office of Drug Control Policy, said Daviess County’s aggressiveness in using the log books is partly why the county was chosen to be one of the first in the state to have the system up and running for pharmacies and law enforcement.

“This is the only community in Kentucky that actively uses the log books with the intent and purpose with which they are supposed to be used,” Ingram said during the training at the Daviess County Sheriff’s Department.

The new system will allow pharmacy workers to type in the ID information from a customer and scan the item being purchased. The system calculates how much pseudoephedrine that person has bought in the last 30 days and can actually prohibit the sale if the customer is over the legal limit.

Before the system, law enforcement could track abusers of the law and charge them with purchasing more than they should. But Ingram said it was decided to place a stop on customers being able to buy too much in an effort to prevent a crime from ever happening.

“Oklahoma was the first state to go to a statewide tracking system (like MethCheck) and they saw a 93 percent reduction in meth labs in the first year,” Ingram said, adding that the program is designed to build leads rather than arrests. “By preventing a crime from happening, it made more sense than trying to catch them after they’ve committed a crime.”

But the tool will still be useful to police as pharmacy employees can report in the system if people are buying pseudoephedrine in groups or if they are acting suspiciously.

Officers can also charge people who attempt to buy more than the legal limit as it’s tracked in the system, and can track the purchases of people of interest.

Ingram said by June 1, all Kentucky pharmacies should be on board, but after receiving training, some Daviess County stores may begin today.

Kim Oliver, a pharmacy tech at Central City Clinic Pharmacy, said the store she works at does not see a lot of pseudoephedrine purchases, but she looks forward to not having to manually do the math and figure out how much people have bought.

Oliver said it may make people more understanding when they know the program prohibits employees from selling the cold medicine.

“They will know the system is online and that law enforcement has access and it will take some responsibility off our shoulders,” she said.

Daviess County Sheriff Keith Cain said when the state began monitoring the sale of pseudoephedrine, local meth labs were reduced by 63 percent in the first six weeks when officers had been responding to two or three labs a week for years.

Cain said the new system will have an even greater impact.

“It took a community effort to get where we are today, and it will take continued community support to” keep us moving forward, he said.

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Copyright (c) 2008, Messenger-Inquirer, Owensboro, Ky.

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