Arkansas Blog

Surely Kroger has enough clout to coerce the distributor into getting a DEA license. (Don't know how long that takes). If they can't, and Kroger can't get the product from this distributor, that should void their contract and they can buy from another properly licensed distributor.

Maybe the cost of the license makes the competing distributors raise their cost to Kroger so its no longer cost effective.

Hopefully this is a short term problem.

Our daughter who lives in El Dorado encountered the same nonsense until the pharmacist at her local drug store told her, "Show me your teeth." My daughter asked why, and the pharmacist said, "You can tell a meth addict by their rotten teeth. Since you got all your teeth and ain't sweating like a pig I can tell you ain't into meth, so go ahead and get your cold medicine."

Putting cold medicine behind the counter has been the single most effective tactic in the war against methamphetamine.

Since the law was enacted, Meth labs have decreased by more than 50% in Arkansas. Considering the explosive growth we were experiencing before; that statistic is simply stunning.

It is at times inconvenient, but the benefits dramatically outweigh the costs.

Through public education and programs like Drug Courts, we are continuing to make strides against Meth; but we have to keep up the pressure.

Having a stuffy nose for a few extra minutes or hours is a small price to pay for having significantly fewer homemade toxic waste dumps/fire hazards in our neighborhoods.

Oh Robert, you mean it wasn't Mike Beebe who was singularly responsible for getting the sudafed behind the counter?

By the way he talks, you'd think he drove around the state relocating the bottles of cold pills himself.

I'm being silly, I know, but your comment reminded me of your commitment to this important issue. Thank you for your integrity.

Unlike many, you never did the Beebe thing, namely saying you're responsible for all aspects of good things that happened.

I like you. I hate Beebe. He's an exagerrating ass. You are a statesman who cares about the issues and not just about getting elected.

...I do see an article nearly every day in the paper on the arrest of yet another meth manufacturer, which leads me to believe that while I have to jump through hoops to get a simple medicine, the meth cookers are going about their business unhindered.

Unhindered? Surely it's hindered at least a little bit. Let's see facts and figures, not anecdotal observations. I have a feeling the new procedures on these OTC medications have indeed made a difference. We need facts and figures, though, to know if it's worth it.

Herzfeld is right about the effect of monitoring over the counter sales... but what's wrong here in Arkansas is that our Governor doesn't give a flying flip about the Drug Problem. His Drug Czar Keith Rutledge has even been moved to a lower level salaried position within the bowels of DHHS. He doesn't even report directly to the Governor any more! He's lost somewhere over in between Prevention and Treatment. The Drug and Alcohol Advisory Committee that Rutledge heads up meets every once in a while to dole out funds and wring their hands!

This was a BOON for Mark Riley and the Arkansas Pharmacists Association.

Most of AR (i.e. rural Arkansas) doesn't have access to an all night Wal-greens. If you're like we and cold medicine with pseudephedrine is the only OCT med that works, your screwed if you live in a rural area...

Small local pharmacies get away with selling these meds at double the cost of Wal-Mart or Walgreens.

Hope you can afford to take off work to buy that $7 box of Sudafed... they're only open until 5:30.

I agree with Spirit.

If there are 50% fewer meth labs found, does that mean that there are 50% fewer meth addicts? Are there 50% fewer people checked into hospitals due to using the crap? Or instead of making it in their bathtubs are they are just finding it elsewhere? Forgive me if I find that number less than stunning. Do we have some meaningful statistics or are we just going to beat our chests on every number that sounds good?

Here's a possible solution. Allegra is now available in generic form. If Allegra works for you, have your doctor prescribe it. A 30 day supply costs me 5 bucks on my prescription drug plan. Hopefully, other plans will provide similar savings and access.

I have seen the downside of both the control of sudafed and the meth scourge.

I have a weekend place in the Ozarks and when unlocking my gate one Saturday I was swarmed by a bunch of wasps (bugs not republicans) that took up residence in the gate post.

My arm began to swell from the many stings and my wife figured I was in dire need of medicine. She hightailed it to town and went to the grocery.

My wife didn't know which was best (namebrand or generic, all night or all day, etc) so she grabbed one of each type. At the checkout stand she was told she could only get one pack. The wife decided she needed all types and slapped down $30 bucks and fled the store. They did not pursue her very hard and she escaped. When she goes in the store now they all yell hide the sudafed.

Now the other side of the coin. A common conversation with the neighbors up there is what dirt roads and hiking trails to avoid because so and so has been cooking meth down there and is really getting paranoid and might do something crazy.

And the rotting teeth is for real. The sheriff in Searcy county was trying to change some rule or law at the jail that would allow them to feed meth inmates baby food for a certain time after arrest because the county was running up huge dental bills when new meth inmates kept breaking their teeth trying to eat the stuff the jail fed prisoners.

Not all but most of us older bloggers will admit to not always following the drug laws when we were young but we are lucky meth was not common when we were young and dumb. This seems to reach out and snatch even casuals users with a vengence. In the 70's coac was price prohibitive and you had to really have some jack to afford enough to get hooked. That does not appear to be the case with meth. The stories of people going off the deep end nearly imediately after trying it seems to confirm the adictability of meth.

But of course these stories are anecdotal but there is a common theme. "He always partied and smoked pot but meth snatched him!"

Yeah, this has worked really well. My mother was in a pharmacy when it was robbed (for drugs) at gunpoint. I'm glad her life was endangered in the fight to prevent mobile home explosions in Butlerville.

If this works so well, let's go ahead and outlaw guns while we're at it. If reducing cold medicine availability reduces meth cookers then surely reducing gun availability will reduce gun crimes. Cut the Interstate speed limit from 70 to 35. That will cut the traffic fatality in half, right?

Not that I'm bitter or anything. . .

Mr. Herzfeld, please cite your source on the 50% number.

Sentencing Law and Policy
A Member of the Law Professor Blogs Network
June 4, 2006
Noticing different legislative reactions to meth and crack
The June 5th edition of Congressional Quarterly Weekly (which is not available on-line) includes a terrific cover story by Seth Stern entitled "Meth vs. Crack: Different Legislative Approaches." As the title suggests, the article explores the noticeable difference between the legislative reaction to the "crack epidemic" 20 years ago and the "meth epidemic" today. Here are just a few snippets of a long and very informative article [update: that can now be accessed here]:
When Rep. Elijah E. Cummings visits rural communities in the Midwest that have been ravaged by methamphetamine use, he hears stories of despair and damage not unlike those he heard during the crack epidemic of the 1980s.... The similarities exist despite fundamental differences between the populations affected by the two drugs. Meth is used mostly by white people in rural areas, while the epicenters of the crack epidemic were the African-American communities of the inner cities. "If you were to close your eyes and listen to how they talk about the effect on communities, how it breaks up families and drives down property values, you would swear they were in any urban community" during crack's heyday, Cummings says.
What's different this time are the solutions that his congressional colleagues are promoting. The first comprehensive federal anti-meth law, enacted this year, focuses on cutting off the supply of the chemical ingredients used to make the drug - not on toughening punishments for dealers or users. "There seems to be more of an emphasis on shutting down these meth labs and trying to figure out ways to treat these addicts and then get them back into flow of society," says Cummings, a Maryland Democrat. "We don't get for crack or heroin that kind of support for prevention, treatment and rehabilitation."...
Lawmakers in both parties consistently characterize meth addicts in more sympathetic terms than they describe crack addicts, and they are showing far less enthusiasm for imprisoning users than at the height of the crack problem two decades ago.... Although lawmakers almost always rebut the notion, their own rhetoric suggests that race is an essential - albeit, perhaps subconscious - reason they are treating the two drug epidemics differently.
Some sociologists and criminologists say the racial component is obvious. "The difference is, meth is a white drug," says Daniel F. Wilhelm of the Vera Institute of Justice, a New York nonprofit organization that seeks to reduce racially disparate prosecutions. "You don't see any pictures of young black men and women described as the face of meth," said Marc Mauer of the Sentencing Project, which advocates for overhauling sentencing law - a reference to the before-and-after mug shots that sheriffs' offices and lawmakers often display to highlight the physical toll of meth addiction.
[L]istening to the way members of Congress talk about meth users and the images they invoke to portray the problem leaves observers such as Craig Reinarman, a sociology professor at the University of California Santa Cruz convinced that many lawmakers at least talk about drug users differently when they're "drawn from the good old boy segment of our society, the us rather than the them."...

"Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism."
Carl Jung (1875 - 1961)

You need baking soda to cut cocaine with. Why not force Kroger and Wal-Mart to keep the baking soda behind the counter. They could require ID for baking soda purchase.

Meth is a big problem in Arkansas. Limits on cold medicine purchase are modest - you can still buy more than a month's supply of medicine at one time. A few years ago it wasn't uncommon to see methamphetamine makers buy a shopping cart full of it at once. Putting it behind the counter keeps them from stealing it since they can't purchase large amounts. It's making some difference at least and it doesnt' harm the legitimate users of the medicine.

Well, a good economist would tell you that an increasing need and decreasing supply of materials will cause prices to soar which would have a negative financial impact on dentally challenged longhaul truck drivers everywhere.

However...

Since production is heading across the boarder where labor prices are lower, the cost should actually remain the same as Mexican drug lords soak up those profits and become bigger and stronger while runny-nosed bleary eyed Arkansans wonder why they have to leave work an hour early to get to Mark Riley's pharmacy in East End before it closes @ 5:30 and pay half their light bill for a box of Sudafed.

"Here's a possible solution. Allegra is now available in generic form. If Allegra works for you, have your doctor prescribe it. A 30 day supply costs me 5 bucks on my prescription drug plan. Hopefully, other plans will provide similar savings and access."

Sincerely,
Mark Riley

That's wonderful the Arkansas Pharmasicts Association is so helpful in pointing us toward their products so they can make even more money. The hundreds of thousands of Arkansas citizens without health insurance thank you for your altruism.

Over the counter cold medicine for the most part is worthless and ineffective. Study after study has shown this. One study last spring by the American College of Chest Physicians concluded "there is no evidence that Mucinex DM, Robitussin Maximum Strength, Vicks 44 Cough Relief and other such products help relieve the most common form of cough, caused by colds or flu."

They strongly recommended against giving them to children under 14. They recommended sufferers use a product that contains "an older antihistimine, such as brompheniramine or chlorpheniramine, with the decongestant phenylephrine or pseudoephedrine to dry up the post-nasal drip that triggers most cold related coughs."

They recommended too that one might just be better off just waiting out the cough, using methods well tested such as warm liquids, non-medicated lozenges and a humidifier.

Dr. Elliot Dick, professor of preventive medicine at the Univ. of Wisconsin has this formula:

Take 2,000 miligrams of V-C an hour for 3 hours at the first sign of cold symptoms. Usually the cold is gone by then but if not, take 1,000 miligrams until it is. This is the technique I use but I take V-C the year around and this past year had no colds, sniffles at all. But I also wash my hands frequently and keep them away from my face, nose, mouth.....

Allegra is not a decongestant unless it's the Allegra-D version.

Sudafed is purely a decongestant.

I go to Fred's for mine but I can't take it very often, so I only have to do this about twice a year. If I needed it all the time, I'd have a friend go buy some for me.

as far as the program goes, my former neighbor's sister was arrested last winter because she went to every pharmacy in town and bought whatever the legal limit of pseudoephedrine was. Took a bunch of friends with her who did the same thing. They were recently tried and got probation, but the boyfriend is in prison. So I'd have to say in this case it worked, although really it might have been better to charge these ladies with stupidity.

I'd like to know how many women end up in prison or at least in trouble because of a man. i bet it's at least 75% higher than the number of men who went to jail or got in trouble over a sorry woman.

Okay, Dr. Phil; thanks for the advice!

I'll remember that when I'm a zombie from working a 60 hr week with the flue and have to take an hour long trip after work to get the only medicine that seems to have any affect that doesn't also leave me unconscious.

After all, it's not like I can go to more than one pharmacy and buy more than two boxes at a time... Tina's former neighbor's sister went to prison for it!!!

OMG!
Is that the Bob Herzfeld who let a child killer off with a plea?
You should be ashamed of yourself sir!

The moment you let that gal off for running over that boy getting off the school bus I lost what little respect (which was not much after that crap with the Bradford boy and his friends debacle) I had for you. I wonder what would have happened to her had she been:
A. Poor
B. Black
C. Mexican

You can sign me one pissed off Saline county voter.

If you are not that Herzfeld then sorry....

On the topic I'm a bit tired of being treated like a criminal because I like to buy my cold medicine in bulk at the beginning of flu season.

see that I received no response from Mr. Herzfeld on whether the 50% reduction is proven by verifiable statistics or just something he pulled out of the air. I'm not surprised.

So, Mr. Herzfeld, I have some other questions. When I buy pseudoephedrine and agree to put my name in a database, I essentially become "a known user of pseudoephedrine." Right? I become part of a potentially criminal profile.

Who has access to that data? The DEA? The State Police? The local police? The state and federal Health Departments, FBI, any number of local, state and federal agencies? Insurance companies?

How do they get access? Is there an on-line connection between the store and law enforcement? Who has the legal right to examine this data, and how often do they examine it? Where is the data stored? How is it protected from hackers who can change it, delete it or vandalize it?

Is the data regulated by the HIPAA medical privacy rules?

Do I have access to this data to see if it's correct? If a pharmacist or pharmacy technician enters the wrong amount, could it be used against me in court? Do I have recourse to correct any mistakes? Is there a standard database used by all stores and are all pharmacists and technicians trained to use it correctly?

Can the merchants use this data as a marketing device? Can they sell it to other data compilers?

Do you have allergies? I see that you are dismissive of "a stuffy nose for a few extra minutes." Do you think that's all an allergy is? You're a government employee with a nice health plan so you can get prescription allergy medicine at a fraction of the cost. And when and if you do, you're not entered into a "known pseudoephedrine user" database, a database that can be used as criminal evidence even if you, Robert Herzfeld, only bought six tablets one time and a pharmacy technician typed in the wrong number or if a hacker changes it to 600 tablets. Well, yes, you, Robert Herzfeld, by your authority, can get it corrected. But what about Joe Bob Smith-Jones who lives in a trailer in Traskwood? Can he get i corrected?

Many of us aren't so fortunate as to have a government health plan. We have to buy the lower cost over the counter medicines (which actually are effective, contrary to what a previous post says about OTC medicines. Try to imagine getting by without ibuprofen or aspirin or antacids.)

Give us the data on what you say, that "since the law was enacted, meth labs have decreased by more than 50% in Arkansas."

That's all I'm asking. Just the facts. I can be persuaded to change my mind. The point is, this system is fraught with problems that no one has considered. Give us the facts, but if you're just showboating to further your political career, take it somewhere else.

I am always amazed at how no one ever seems to wonder WHY people become addicted and whether arresting them is the answer.

Since meth makes people sleep less, could it be partly a symptom of the terrible economy for the lower middle class and poor, who have to work more than one job just to get by? There is nothing like being to go for long hours without getting tired when you have to work all the time.

That's why so many women go for it. Between being expected to take care of their children along with working because of the lack of welfare these days, they just don't have the time to sleep.

Just thinking... the demand is there.