Chaffee City Council OKs prescription requirement for pseudoephedrine

CHAFFEE, Mo. -- Chaffee will join numerous other Southeast Missouri cities in requiring a prescription for medicines containing ingredients used to manufacture methamphetamine when a new ordinance takes effect June 1.

Several law enforcement leaders from the area, including Scott County Sheriff Rick Walter, Cape Girardeau County Sheriff John Jordan, Sikeston Department of Public Safety spokesman Lt. Jim McMillen and Poplar Bluff, Mo., police chief Danny Whiteley, made an appeal in support of an ordinance during Chaffee's city council meeting Monday night. Some also spoke in opposition, including Kevin Teegarden, owner of Medicap Pharmacy in Chaffee, and Jim Guinner, a St. Louis-based advocate for consumer health care products.

Chaffee was, according to law enforcement officials, the last city in an 18-county region of Southeast Missouri that did not have an ordinance requiring a prescription for pseudoephedrine.

"Right now this is kind of the last holdup," Walter told council members before their unanimous vote in support of an ordinance.

Counties that have cities with similar ordinances are seeing declines in the number of meth labs, according to Jordan. Cape Girardeau County saw its number of labs recovered by law enforcement drop from 66 in 2010 to 38 in 2011, and that was from products containing pseudoephedrine becoming less available due to ordinances, he said.

Walter said that during the past two months there have been 723 boxes of pseudoephedrine-containing medicines sold at Medicap Pharmacy in Chaffee with the majority of those being purchased by individuals who live outside the immediate area. Only 14 boxes of the medicine have been sold to Chaffee residents in that time frame, he said.

Jordan and Whiteley both said they were against government interfering with citizens' rights to buy products but that ordinances were the way to go to keep meth production under control.

"I agree it will be an inconvenience," Whiteley said, "but children and families are at stake."

Poplar Bluff, Cape Girardeau, Jackson, Perryville, Scott City and Sikeston all have similar ordinances.

Teegarden defended his pharmacy's pricing, $36.90, for a 15-pack generic version of 24-hour Claritin D tablets, which law enforcement officials called price gouging, and said the reason his prices are set high are an attempt to deter purchases from people who live outside the community and only purchase the products for making meth.

"That has not worked, I agree," he said.

But Teegarden and other supporters of selling products containing pseudoephedrine over the counter say there are other options, such as improving a statewide electronic tracking system for purchases.

Guinner said the problem for Missouri is not the method of sales but the diversions of the sales for illegal purposes.

Joy Krieger, executive director of the St. Louis chapter of the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, was not present at the meeting but said the state's electronic tracking system has proved effective when a pharmacy has encountered someone who is questionable buying pseudoephedrine and that arrests have been made in the St. Louis area thanks to the system and its connection to law enforcement.

Teegarden said following the meeting that his staff has refused sales of products containing pseudoephedrine for driver's licenses not matching what's in the system and it does alert pharmacists to when a customer is over their limit for the number of boxes they can legally buy in a time frame.

He said the ordinance will take some pressure off his pharmacies but that now he has to wonder what to do -- he questioned if he should stop selling the medicines immediately so people would figure out they soon wouldn't be able to get them without a prescription.

Walter said he regretted that the ordinance might affect business for some pharmacies but that the sales taxes those businesses pay in to local governments are eaten up quickly -- at least at the county level -- with the cost of dealing with drug offenders.

"For us, it's a great victory," he said. "The more we can control this problem, the better off we will be and the safer we will be."

eragan@semissourian.com

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