Senate passes anti-meth measure

Governor is expected to sign bill that restricts cold-medicine sales

Statesman Journal
By Steve Law


Meth cooks will have a harder time scrounging up ingredients to make the illegal drug.
But Oregonians with stuffed sinuses and allergies will find it harder to get medicine.
Both will result from a landmark bill passed Saturday by the Oregon Senate that will make Oregon the first state to require prescriptions for cold medicines that contain pseudoephedrine, such as Sudafed.
Police say those cold remedies are an essential source for home-grown meth labs, which account for one-third of the local meth supply.
"There are many recipes for meth, but every one of them requires pseudoephedrine," said Sen. Roger Beyer, R-Molalla. Beyer and other lawmakers said it was worth inconveniencing cold sufferers if the bill crimps the meth supply.
House Bill 2485-B, which passed the Senate 26-4, also stiffens penalties for meth-related crimes and fosters the use of drug courts to treat meth addiction. The bill now moves on for a routine concurrence vote in the House, then to Gov. Ted Kulongoski's desk for his expected signature.


this is very sad.

A lot of us may not be old enough to remember Prohibition, where the government tried to make the sale of alcohol a legal, but all that it managed to do was to increase the black market sale of alcohol and made people rich.

I really did not know what one term Ted is thinking by imposing this. Where is he getting his information that this will make a significant reduction in the production of meth?

I have said this many times before, we have a governmental system without checks and balances. Our current system allows for people to be elected and then they can do whatever they feel they wish to do knowing full well that it is very difficult for the public to do anything.

One caller to Lars Larson show yesterday stated that he called Ted Kulongoski's office and the person who answered the phone basically told him that the governor was not interested in hearing anything about this issue, that his mind was made up.

That is not what a representative society is all about. We should we look at our local government and perhaps consider England's Parliament where they have the option to get rid of an elected official by a vote of no-confidence making them more responsive to the public.

So for right now the governor is making cold medicines a prescription drug, what is next? Cough syrup, aspirin, allergy medicine (I think that one is included already).

This is only the tip of the iceberg folks.