A database is starting to outline the scope of Missouri’s problems with the sale of pseudoephedrine-based cold medicines to people using them to make meth. But one of the state’s leading meth-fighters says the database is not nearly enough.
About half of Missouri’s pharmacies are plugged into an internet database that keeps track of who buys or tries to buy cold medicines with pseudoephedrine.
A private company keeps track of the numbers.
Past President Jason Grellner of the Missouri Narcotics Officers Association, has seen numbers showing about 87,000 boxes of pseudoephedrine medicines were sold in Missouri, just in October. He calls the number “incredible” and “outrageous.,”
. One pharmacy in Cape Girardeau sold almost 2,400 boxes of cold medicines with pseudoephedrine in them last month. He thinks ninety percent of the statewide sales are going directly to meth labs Grellner estimates the 87,000 boxes had enough pseudoephedrine in them to produce about 242 pounds of meth. Grellner says the numbers will skyrocket this month when all of the Wal-Mart pharmacies are on line.
Grellner says the reason for the high sales numbers at a Cape Girardeau pharmacy is that Cape Girardeau is the only southeast Missouri city that doe snot have ordinances requiring prescriptions for those purchases. He says the database is a tool but not a deterrent. Grellner says a statewide prescription-only law would wipe out the meth-making business. But Grellner says the legislature has refused to do anything for ten years.
He’ll try again in 20-11.