My Turn Column

March 16, 2005

Note to editors: The following is a My Turn Column by Attorney General Terry Goddard.

Methamphetamine is being cooked every day in illegal labs across Arizona - destroying lives, feeding other crimes, endangering children and costing taxpayers tens of millions of dollars.

These makeshift labs are able to keep fueling the meth epidemic largely for one reason: the key chemical - pseudoephedrine - is so easy to get from decongestant tablets.

Meth cooks rely on "smurfers" who go from store to store, walking out with hundreds or even thousands of tablets at a time. At most stores, they meet little resistance, taking packages often by the dozen.

My office talked recently with a convicted meth user and smurfer, who delivered these pills to meth labs in big numbers. Maggie (not her real name) is serving a three-year prison sentence on meth-related charges. She graduated from high school in Gilbert, got married and started a career as an accounting clerk. When she was 24, Maggie tried meth for the first time and smoked it for several years until her arrest and conviction.

Smurfing, she found, was an easy way to pay for her drug habit. She and a partner would come out of a store with enough Sudafed tablets, or store-brand versions of the medication, to treat 300 colds, sometimes taking every package on the shelf.

But her biggest hauls came on weekends. She would drive from Mesa to Phoenix to Prescott to Flagstaff, hitting stores in each city and coming home with as many as 20,000 pills. She supplied them to several small labs in exchange for cash and all the meth she wanted.

She might still be smurfing had she not been stopped for a traffic violation. A large quantity of pseudoephedrine was found in her car, leading to a conviction for possessing precursor chemicals, theft and fraudulent schemes.

We asked Maggie what she thought would happen if the law in Arizona were changed to require pseudoephedrine tablets to be placed behind pharmacy counters and a log kept to prevent repeat shopping.

"Most meth labs would shut down," she said. "Without all the tablets, there's no cooking."

That's what Oklahoma found in the past year. Its new anti-meth law moved pseudoephedrine tablets behind the pharmacy counter and required proof of ID plus a signature. Meth lab seizures have dropped more than 70 percent and meth arrests have declined dramatically.

The Oklahoma law's positive impact prompted 29 states, including Arizona, to introduce similar measures. While the bill in this state remains stuck in the House Appropriations Committee, other states are moving forward.

Three states - Mississippi, Kentucky and South Dakota - have passed Oklahoma-style bills with few dissenting votes. In Iowa, Minnesota, Kansas, Missouri and Arkansas, the bills have cleared either the House or Senate, most with unanimous approval.

Opponents of the Arizona bill complain it might inconvenience customers, but their argument is seriously overstated. Decongestants will still be available on the shelf in gelcap or liquid form, since these products are generally not used to make meth. Pfizer, which markets Sudafed, is now selling Sudafed PE, which can't be converted to meth and would stay on convenience store shelves. And consumers who still want pseudoephedrine tablets could buy them by showing a photo ID and signing a log book.

Meth production and use today ranks as Arizona's No. 1 crime problem. The highly addictive drug is directly connected with many other crimes, including domestic abuse, child neglect, burglary, auto theft and identity theft. Victims include many young children exposed to these highly toxic labs. Meth cooking imposes high costs on taxpayers, businesses, healthcare systems and the environment. The cost to society associated with a single meth lab has been estimated at more than $300,000.

In the past month, I hosted two meth summits - one that included senior law enforcement officials from 23 states and one with 50 Arizona law enforcement leaders. Both groups agreed that the most effective step our state can take to fight meth is to make pseudoephedrine tablets harder for criminals to get by putting them behind pharmacy counters and requiring an ID and a signature.

A little inconvenience is a very small price to pay to help bring this drug crisis under control.