Cape Girardeau County sheriff testifies in favor of pseudoephedrine prescription rule

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- The sheriff of Cape Girardeau County says if pseudoephedrine becomes a prescription drug, "Meth labs will be history in Missouri." Sheriff John Jordan testified Wednesday at the State Capitol in favor of a bill that would require anyone seeking the decongestant have a doctor's prescription. Rep. Dave Schatz, R-Sullivan, sponsors the legislation that he is calling the "Meth Lab Elimination Act." It reads that all precursor drugs used in the manufacture of methamphetamine become Schedule III narcotics, which require a doctor's prescription to purchase. Currently, medicines containing pseudoephedrine are kept behind a pharmacist's counter and the purchaser is subject to a database check that keeps track in real time of a person's pseudoephedrine purchases. Representatives of the law enforcement community from all over the state spoke in favor of the bill. The executive director of the state's pharmacist professional group says a new database system for monitoring pseudoephedrine purchases has just gone into operation, and his group wants to see if that approach works before moving to the more extreme prescription-only plan. The bill has been introduced in House committees since at least 2006, but the legislation has never reached the floor. Rep. Rodney Schad, chairman of the House committee that heard the bill said he wasn't sure of the bill's fate. It's expected that Schad's committee will vote on the bill at its next meeting.