PORTLAND — Gov. Ted Kulongoski today signed legislation that will make Oregon the first state to require prescriptions for cold and allergy medications that can be converted into methamphetamine.

The requirement applies to any medication containing pseudoephedrine, the key ingredient in meth, the highly addictive street drug.

"This is a tremendous start but we must recognize that it is just that, a start," the governor said. "We have a long way to go."

Kulongoski said he was aware of inconveniences that might arise from having to get prescriptions for commonly purchased remedies but said pharmaceutical companies already are producing replacement remedies that don't contain pseudoephedrine.

He held up a list of 40 such products.

If the federal government passed a law similar to Oregon's, he said, it would further encourage pharmaceutical companies to drop the use of pseudoephedrine.

The governor also signed a bill increasing the penalty for drug crimes involving children and bills for funding drug courts, for related corrections expenses and other costs.

The prescription bill sailed though both houses of the Legislature, opposed by only a handful of lawmakers who said it would be an inconvenience to their constituents to need prescriptions for such common medicines as Sudafed and Claritin D.

The state Board of Pharmacy has until next July to implement the new prescription requirement but board executive director Gary Schnabel said it could be in place within three months.

Patients will be allowed up to five refills in a six-month period, Schnabel said.

Tom Holt, executive director of the Oregon State Pharmacy Association, said he thinks the law will drive the pseudoephedrine-containing cold and allergy pills out of the market within a year or two.

Oregon and several other states already require consumers to show identification and sign a log when obtaining these cold and allergy medicines from pharmacies, and Congress is moving toward similar restrictions.

Sen. Ginny Burdick, chairwoman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, argued that regulations moving the medicines behind the counter don't work.

She said that as an experiment four legislators in Salem were able to buy enough cold medication in a few hours to make up 200 hits of meth.

The real victims of the new legislation, she said, are home meth cooks "and that's the way it should be."

While increasing amounts of methamphetamine are coming in from Mexico, bill supporters say it could sharply reduce the number of home meth labs where the chemicals used in the process can pose severe health problems.

Kulongoski estimated that between 20 percent and 25 percent of the meth sold in Oregon comes from such home labs.

He said once home meth labs are under control in Oregon, police and others could concentrate on stopping the drug from coming in from elsewhere.
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I have a few problems with this.
I get pretty regular sinus congestion in the winter. I wake up in the morning and bammer...my head feels like it is underwater. I go down to Walgreens, get my beloved Actifed, and away goes my congestion and I can function.
To expect me to have to go through the hassle of going to see my doctor just so I can get that products is fucking asinine. Now we have a doctor who has to see a patient when the patient doesn't really need to be seen, I'm taking time away from work or classes to go through that, and I'm paying my doctor a copay just so I can breathe. I'm stocking up on this shit now before Washington does the same. We actually have to show ID to buy it here.
Way to fight the war on drugs! Make people with a head cold go through bullshit to be able to function normally!

Stupid.

so is meth. but you are right, this doesn't make much sense. Couldn't a manufacturer just cross the state line and get these drugs somewhere else?

Of course this will stop nothing. It's just more obnoxious politicians f**king with your rights. As soon as we let them start banning smoking, it all went down hill from there.

They need to stop meth now. Last year my fiance had to go through decontamination because she was in a parolees house and the parolee had a shit load of meth. The apartment complex is in a nice part of town also.

Just 2 nights ago my co-worker's neighbors house was raided. It was a huge meth lab and he lives in a nice neighborhood. Meth is everywhere. Methheads leave bags of bi-products everywhere. I think 4 people died last year in Colorado from opening these bags.

I think in Nebraska you can only get 1 pack of pseudoephedrine every two months or something like that. I think this law is coming to Colorado. Even now you have to go to the pharmacy desk to get pseudoephedrine. You can't buy it on the shelf.

meth is a huge problem, but what a poorly thought out law. i'm prone to sinus problems and after quite a bit of trial and error, sudies alleviate my symptoms best with the least amount of side effects.

if i lived in washington, i'd just start taking meth when i got sinusitis in the future just to make a point


i believe that in illinois, pseudoephedrine is sold only behind counters now, but i could be mistaken.

I think this might be a bit extreme. I think that having it behind the counter was sufficient. That said, meth is a fucking plague in this state, and in particular the county I live in.

I have no problem with it being behind the counter, or having to sign something when I buy it. There's a difference between a guy with the "stuffed up" voice buying 1 pack of decongestants and a shifty-eyed guy buying the store out.

Behind the counter is one thing, i wouldn't have a problem with that. Hell give me a form to sign and put my name in a database of purchasers. Im not a meth producer so i'm not worried...but having to go to a doctor to get a prescription for over the counter drugs is rediculous. I have allergies for a good portion of the year, and have to take these meds for several months out of the summer just to be able to function and having to go to a doctor every few weeks would be a huge hassel.
Luckily meth isn't big around here yet. We just have a crack problem

I agree that it should have stopped with having them sold behind the counter. Here (currently) they have to see your driver's license and copy down the number etc before you can buy the stuff. I think that is a GOOD IDEA.

however, having to see your doc? Well, let's just hope that they haven't also made a "no refills" exception. Hopefully they allow you to have a year's worth of refills or something once you see the doc. But seriously, just what doctors need, a bunch of non-sick patients during allergy season to stress out their schedule huh? Oh, and lets make that a bunch of non-sick patients on oregon health plan, for which the doctors get poorly reimbursed and the tax payers foot the bill.

brilliant.

I think the idea for this law comes from the fact that people rotate from store to store buying this stuff. There are gangs of people who go from drug store to Costco to Wal-mart in different cities.

right, but isn't that the point of having to show your drivers license? youd think they'd make a computer database or something, and then if you bought with increased frequency, they'd come find you...

One thing we can all agree on is that tweakers suck.

Those damn blue-collar tweakers.

i'm no physician, but i don't even know how this would work, as pseudoephedrine is more or less a "take as needed" drug - in other words it isn't like, say, penicillin, where you are required to take it on a set schedule until it's gone.
So i'm not even sure what a "refill" would constitute - i, for example, can't sleep through the night if i take a sudie after 5 o'clock or so, so i'm obviously not going to pop them every four hours like some people. i dunno.

well, on the rx form they could write, refill 12 times or, refill through such and such a date.. and then when you go back to your pharmacy they'd despense you more until your "refills" ran out, then you'de have to go back to the doc.

to me, this almost makes it EASIER for meth addicts to get it..you go to the doc, say you have allergies, they give you an rx with so many refills, and then you are able to get the meds, no questions asked, because you have a prescription.

I know that oregon is having a really hard time with meth, so I can't get too up in arms about this. Jackson County has a population of approx 190,000.. and our local paper produces a "meth watch" column which highlights the meth related activities in ONE WEEK'S TIME. The Child welfare part dissapoints me most.

What did cavemen do when they had headaches?

The STFU or the witch doctor would crack a hole in their head to get the evil spirit out.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/cpress/20050818 ... MlJVRPUCUl

Ontario mulls restrictions on sale of cold medications to combat crystal meth

TORONTO (CP) - A special Ontario committee will examine the feasibility of regulating the sale of some popular cold and allergy medications that contain the key ingredient used to make crystal methamphetamine, the province's health minister said Friday.

But George Smitherman was quick to note that requiring a prescription for common over-the-counter medications such as Sudafed, Actifed and Contac is just one of many ideas that will be on the table as Canada's most populous province wrestles with the growing national scourge of crystal meth.

"This is one of the very many ideas that's out there and warrants appropriate consideration," Smitherman said.

"We need to look in those jurisdictions that have taken that step (to see) whether it's proven to be effective."

A task force set up by Ontario's Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services to combat the spread of crystal meth has so far only met once and is still in its infancy, said ministry spokesman Andrew Hilton.

"It's still way, way, way too early to start speculating on what they're going to recommend or advise," Hilton said.

"Meth is a difficult issue, because you've got health issues, you've got addiction issues, and you've got educational issues because a lot of kids don't know what it is. So there's a whole different range of takes on this topic."

At a meeting in Regina in June, Canada's health and justice ministers agreed that the western provinces would come up with a plan by October to restrict the sale of cold medicines that contain ephedrine and pseudoephedrine.

The idea of restricting the sale of drugs containing pseudoephedrine is nothing new in the U.S., where Oregon last month became the first U.S. state to require a prescription to buy cold medication that has pseudoephedrine as its sole ingredient.

Several other U.S. states already have less stringent restrictions on the sale of pseudoephedrine. North Dakota requires people buying cold medication to show identification.

Health Canada has itself proposed regulating the sale of the drug's chemical ingredients, but the idea has come under heavy fire from the pharmaceutical industry.

"Cold medications are not the problem; criminals and methamphetamine are the problem," said David Skinner, president of the Nonprescription Drug Manufacturers Association of Canada.

"The issue has nothing to do with the millions of Canadians who legitimately use cold medication to treat their symptoms instead of going to their doctors to seek a prescription."

Skinner, whose association represents the $3.6-billion over-the-counter drug industry in Canada, said the Ontario government would be making an "ill-advised" decision if they went through with any restrictions on the sale of cold medications.

Several effective cold and allergy medications would be taken off the shelves and an already cash-strapped health-care system would be further taxed as Ontario residents went in search of doctors to write prescriptions, Skinner warned.

Mark Kearney, vice-president of the Canadian Pharmacists Association, said requiring a prescription to buy cold medication would be a mistake.

"Sending someone to a physician for a viral cold seems like a waste of resources and a real barrier to accessing medications."

Many common pharmacies only carry pseudoephedrine in packages smaller than three grams, Kearney noted. To get enough to make crystal meth, a person would need to buy between 50 and 100 packages, a red flag for any pharmacist.

"In reality, any pharmacist dealing with a patient getting a large quantity of pseudoephedrine is going to make an intervention, more so because of drug interactions and adverse reactions to the medication and trying to help them with their health," he said.

"(By restricting cold medication), you're biting off such a small part of the problem that it would almost have no effect."

A better idea would be for the government to invest in more education and addiction treatment, Skinner said.

"There are much better solutions. We encourage the government to have some dialogue before acting, rather than taking the ready-fire-aim approach."

Whatever strategy Ontario's Liberal government settles on, it will be comprehensive and well-informed, said Smitherman, who noted that crystal meth has been a problem in his downtown Toronto riding for many years.

"I come from a community where crystal meth has always been somewhat present," Smitherman said. "But associated with the resurgence of the popularity of that drug is a significant human toll that we're very, very mindful of."

why is bammer involved in your mornings.