Cold and allergy sufferers in Texas will now have to look beyond the local supermarket to find a quick fix.
A bill governing the sale of pseudoephedrine went into effect Tuesday as a reactionary measure to the recent spate of methamphetamine lab busts. It follows a 2004 Oklahoma Sudafed ban that sent many "cookers" south to seek supplies.
Senate Bill 107, authored by state Sen. Craig Estes, R-Wichita Falls, prohibits the sale of more than two boxes per person of Sudafed - the main ingredient in methamphetamine - at pharmacies and requires documentation of all transactions. Over-the-counter drug retailers such as convenience stores and supermarkets are banned from selling the drug altogether, unless they have a licensed pharmacy on the premises.
UT-area merchants have been working to make sure they are in compliance with the new regulations; each violation can result in a $1,000 fine.
University Health Services has had to replace the starch-based tablets in its "cold kits" with the gel caplet "nonabusable form" of Sudafed. The shelves at the UHS pharmacy now bear the laminated box fronts of popular cold medicines such as Sudafed, Tylenol and Claritin where boxes of the drugs once stood, along with a sign reading "All products containing Sudafed (pseudoephedrine) must now be requested from out cashiers and a log must be signed." A similar statement greets consumers at CVS Pharmacy; 7-Eleven has taken it off the shelves altogether.
Consumers wishing to purchase the "banned" drugs must speak to a pharmacy employee and fill out a detailed form before heading home with no more than two boxes of the decongestant, although Chuck Roper, a health education coordinator at the Student Health Center, said the feasibility of keeping tabs on all of the tablets is impractical.
"It would be an accounting nightmare for the state," he said.
Roper said this measure is just another step in the war on drugs.
"When I was younger, they did the same thing with airplane glue; a few years later, they put aerosol paint cans in a locked box," he said. "Does that prevent young people from huffing spray paint? No."
According to Roper, methamphetamine use on campus is not a huge problem, although he said the numbers were probably underreported because the drugs aren't bulky and have no odor.
"It's hard to hide a case of beer," he said, "but it's easy to hide a gram of coke."
Anonymous surveys show that the primary drugs abused at the University are "study drugs" such as Adderall and Ritalin rather than methamphetamines, with an overwhelming ratio of 20 users to 1.
Only the varieties of cold medicine containing pseudoephedrine as the primary active ingredient in a tablet form have been banned, so forms containing other primary active ingredients, such as the phenylephrine-based Sudafed PE or liquid gels, from which the drug cannot be extracted and made into a methamphetamine, are still on the shelves.
"It's hard to believe people who want to make it won't be able get it," said Tammy Bushey, assistant director of clinical support and public information at UHS. "If you're making an illegal drug, you're going to find ways to get it."
Terry Franks, legislative director to Sen. Estes, said that while people manufacturing illegal drugs probably have other means of obtaining the key ingredient, they are likely to go someplace where the goods are more readily available.
"The point of the law Sen. Estes passed is if they can't get it here, they'll leave Texas." he said.
Franks related the story of a federal case in which law enforcement officers tailed a suspect from Wichita Falls to the Louisiana border during a 72-hour period. The man hit every convenience store along the way - a practice known as "smurfing" - and was eventually found to have nabbed 26,000 boxes of pseudoephedrine.
"We know we're not going to stop this, but if we can keep it off the streets, we can curtail drug use," Franks said.
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