May 16, 2005 -- Retailers to Monitor Sale of Cold Medicines Used to Make Methamphetamine

Many of the nation’s largest retailers of cough and cold medications announced last week that they will take popular products such as Sudafed, Tylenol Cold, and Claritin-D off their shelves and put them back of pharmacy counters, where buyers may have to sign logs and produce identification before they can buy them. The move is intended to curb sales of products that contain the pharmaceutical substance pseudoephredine, which is easily converted by a process called “cooking” to the dangerous and addictive drug methamphetamine. Criminals and small methamphetamine producers have been stealing or buying pseudophredine-containing products from stores and using them to make the illegal drug. The problem of metamphetamine addiction is so severe in some parts of the country that “retailers are making sacrifices to help law enforcement officials” in the effort to control production of the drug, said a spokesman for the National Association of Chain Drug Stores. Many states already have restrictions on the sale of pseudophredine-containing medicines, but the rules vary from state to state, and legislation has been introduced in the U.S. Congress to make the procedures uniform across the country. Most large retailers said they expect to put their own restrictions in place during the next two months, whether or not the legislation is passed.