L.A. NPR affiliate grills DrSN's Eder on meth flap

Drug Store News, June 6, 2005

89.3 KPCC

Following are excerpts from "AirTalk" guest host Patt Morrison's interview with Rob Eder, executive editor of Drug Store News, regarding the recent move by several retailers to move products containing pseudoephedrine behind the pharmacy counter.

Patt Morrison: For some years now, you've had miracles at your fingertips. Cold remedies that were unknown 20 years ago are now on the market.... That's not going to be the case for much longer because many of these cold remedies contain an ingredient that methamphetamine labs use to create their drugs. Pseudoephedrine is used in many of these cold remedies, such as NyQuil, and now we're going to find that many drug stores and stores that carry these remedies on the open shelves are going to be moving them behind the pharmacist's counter in the face of a number of efforts at the federal and local level to regulate them....

Some stores have been doing this for quite a while. But without laws enforced, it seems like jumping the gun to take this action on the part of these stores. Why are they doing it now?

Rob Eder: First of all, there's a lot of support in Washington for a national law restricting the sale of pseudoephedrine. In the wake of 9/11, a lot of the funding that used to go to busting these labs has been shifted to other things, and this problem of pseudoephedrine winding up in criminal hands, and being converted to crystal meth has been something that's really gone on for a lot longer than people have given it attention. This has been an issue that's concerned OTC drug manufacturers going back at least a dozen years, makers of products like Sudafed and NyQuil. They didn't want to restrict access to the consumer if for no other reason than it's just bad business.

Morrison: This is nearly a $2 billion a year industry, and certainly we've seen the advertising promoting the sales of these particular drugs.

Eder: I think the drug stores just want to be viewed as good corporate citizens now that it's become such an issue. And there are so many other issues impacting drug stores, issues like Medicare reform and drug benefits for seniors ... and doesn't want to be seen as the Big Bad Wolf doing anything that's going to be bad for the community....

The reality is that drug stores sell drugs. And they could be abused. There was a story in Sports Illustrated not so many years ago about National Hockey League players taking whole boxes of Sudafed before games to get themselves all ramped up.

Morrison: But the question is whether these stores may be cutting a number of consumers out of their service area. The question is why they ought to be doing the work of the [Drug Enforcement Agency].

Eder: I'm not so sure that the DEA could do this work on its own. Trying to get at these small labs is very difficult for the DEA, and I'm afraid that some of the alternatives might be some kind of Big, Brother surveillance-type activities that I really wouldn't be comfortable with. I don t know how the DEA's going to find these small cookers that rent rooms in motels and burn them down--they're not so easy to find. At some point, you have to control the supply.

Morrison: But do you approve of extending this to signing in for these ingredients and showing ID?

Eder: That wouldn't be something I'm in favor of, but I think consumers in general could benefit from a little more consultation with the pharmacist on using these types of products.