A spokesman for the companies that make cold medicines with pseudoephedrine in them thinks those wanting to make them prescription-only are over-dramatizing some numbers.
A spokesman for the Missouri Narcotics Officers Association calls last month’s sale of 87-thousand boxes of pseudoephedrine-containing cold medicine “incredible’ and “outrageous”
Hardly that, says lobbyist Jim Moody for the Consumer Health Care P:roducts Association, which is paying for the tracking system that produced that number. He thinks there are as many as 125,000 people with allergies–meaning the number of boxes of medications sold in October are not particularly high.
That would be 100-thousand or so boxes of medication sold each month, on average.
The narcotics officers say the only way to cut off the supply of meth precursors in cold medicines is to require prescriptions for them. Moody says that will only inconvenience the large majority of Missourians with allergies. He maintains the database that shows purchases and attempted purchases will lead officers to people making meth.
Moody says the database should be given time to work before any prescription legislation is considered. He doesn’t think it will be necessary.
