Southern California is taking its war on methamphetamines to an unlikely front--the counter at your neighborhood pharmacy.
As the region tries to shake its reputation as the methamphetamine capital of America, an array of localities is cracking down on a source of one of the illicit drug's key ingredients--over-the-counter cold medicines.
The San Gabriel Valley city of Covina joins Riverside, Orange and San Diego counties in considering measures to ban large purchases of some medicines; similar laws have been enacted by San Bernardino County and the city of Chino.
The cold medicine laws are being proposed at such a clip that the California Grocers Assn. and other trade groups held a special conference Thursday in Ontario on how to deal with these statutes.
The legislative efforts are aimed at some customers who have been hauling dozens of packs of cold medicine from stores, then tossing them into a noxious stew to make methamphetamine. Many cold medicines contain a key ingredient in the homemade drug--also known as crank, speed or ice--which is eclipsing cocaine as the most popular narcotic in the nation.
Law enforcement officers in Orange County have long been aware that meth lab operators were buying up large quantities of a cold medicine ingredient for their illegal operation.
Carl Armbrust, the prosecutor in charge of the Narcotics Enforcement Team at the Orange County district attorney's office, said pseudoephedrine buyers often pose as doctors or drug distributors.
Methamphetamine is mostly manufactured in Southern California, inside makeshift labs hidden in motels, mobile homes and subdivisions, which spew toxic fumes and sometimes explode, killing dealers and innocents alike.
As meth's popularity grows unabated, the labs are migrating east, and authorities hope that the cold medicine restrictions will follow.
"We want to run them out of the state of California and make it so inconvenient for them they have to go elsewhere," said Walt Allen, a Covina councilman and state drug agent. "And then hopefully we want to continue to chase them across the country and make life impossible for them by shutting down easy access to the chemicals."
The man who got the ball rolling, former Chino Police Chief Richard Sill, was inspired by local drug dealers' behavior. "They literally set up shop in a hotel across the street from the Drug Emporium and then blew themselves and the lab up," he said.
