Pubdate: Thu, 08 Dec 2005
Source: Phoenix New Times (AZ)
Copyright: 2005 New Times, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/640
Author: Sarah Fenske
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine)

Series: The Perfect Drug

BAD MEDICINE

Locking up cold medicine makes the politicians feel good -- but it 
won't put a dent in Arizona's meth habit

If you're super bored, or really desperate, you can make crystal meth 
from Tylenol Cold/Severe Congestion cool-burst caplets.

You need denatured ethanol, or acetone, or anhydrous ammonia. You 
need iodine crystals and red phosphorous.

And then you need 16,560 Tylenol caplets -- a purchase that alone 
will set you back $3,857, plus tax.

But if you get enough of those ingredients, and buy those 690 boxes 
of Tylenol, and spend hours boiling and filtering and then filtering 
all over again, you could, conceivably, end up with crystal meth.

One ounce of crystal meth.

An ounce that would cost you $400, tops, on the street.

And that is precisely why crystal meth users, no matter how badly 
addicted, aren't known to spend their time boiling and filtering 
Tylenol Cold/Severe Congestion cool-burst caplets.

There are better ways to get the drug. Cheaper ways.

Even the addicts in Arizona who "cook" their own crystal meth -- and 
the Drug Enforcement Agency is convinced there aren't too many left, 
now that cheap, potent Mexican meth has flooded the market -- don't 
use Tylenol Cold/Severe Congestion. They know they can get nine times 
the yield from Sudafed.

And that's why it's so bizarre that the city councils in Phoenix and 
Scottsdale have enacted tough new ordinances that restrict stuff 
like, well, Tylenol cold medicine. And that businesses like Walgreens 
are putting it behind the counter even in places without such laws.

Here's how it works:

As of this week, customers in Phoenix who want to buy decongestants 
containing any amount of pseudoephedrine must go to the pharmacy or 
another area where the product is kept under lock and key.

They're limited to three boxes, per month.

They'll have to show ID and sign a logbook.

And every month, the pages of the logbook will be faxed to the 
Phoenix Police Department, so the police can keep track of who's 
buying Tylenol Cold/Severe Congestion, and Aleve Cold and Sinus, and 
Robitussin.

If any store sells one of those products, and doesn't follow the 
rules, the cops can seize the stuff, legally.

That's the new law.

Welcome to the politics of Arizona's crystal meth crisis.

These days, politicians are so eager to look like they're doing 
something to stop the demon drug that they're locking up 
decongestants that are rarely, if ever, used in meth production.

And, yeah, they look tough. Hey, they're fighting big pharmaceutical 
companies and taking on child-killing meth cooks!

But it's mostly smoke and mirrors.

"This idea of regulating pseudoephedrine is 10 years late," says Jim 
Molesa, a DEA agent based in Flagstaff. Molesa is considered the 
leading authority on Mexican meth in Arizona.

"It's laughable," he says. "Are you that out of touch that you can't 
grasp the issue? Every community needs a comprehensive treatment program."

Indeed, with meth pouring in from Mexico and the local lab problem 
mostly under control, the idea of devoting so many resources to fight 
meth cooks is showy distraction, not effective public policy.

And what it's distracting us from is a complete mess.

The two key state officials who should be leading the charge on the 
state's meth crisis have dropped the ball in wildly different ways.

Governor Janet Napolitano, a Democrat who's been so successful at 
running this red state that Republicans can't even come up with a 
serious gubernatorial challenger for 2006, has basically ignored the problem.

Meanwhile, Attorney General Terry Goddard, also a Democrat, has made 
crystal meth his crusade. But by focusing on labs -- the one 
meth-related problem in Arizona that's actually been declining for 
years -- his actions reek of political opportunism.

For Goddard, targeting meth labs has become a one-dimensional 
Western. The politicians and lawmen are in one corner, with their 
white hats and good intentions. In the other, the evil drug companies 
and their lackeys, who care nothing about the abuse of children.

Those who oppose his plan for taking on meth labs, he claimed in one 
press release, have capitulated to the "pharmaceutical industry."

But the truth is much more complicated.

There are pharmaceutical companies on both sides of the issue.

The new Phoenix ordinances, in fact, follow the game book of one of 
the biggest pharmaceutical companies: Pfizer, the company that makes Sudafed.

The medicine that's actually used in meth labs.

Meanwhile, the real truth of Arizona's meth problem is being ignored.

Despite good indication that a significant number of Arizona 
residents have struggled with meth addiction for at least eight 
years, officials have yet to run an effective, statewide public 
health campaign about the dangers of the drug.

Our leaders haven't even figured out who's using meth, much less how 
to target potential addicts before they start.

Meanwhile, meth addicts are stuck with an inadequate treatment system 
that's seeing more and more users every year -- a system that no one 
is willing to fund enough to do the job properly. Not insurance 
companies, and not the government. (See "Meth Treatment.")

These are large, complicated problems, problems that defy easy sound 
bites. Problems that can't be solved by the next election cycle.

Which is why no one should be surprised that our politicians have 
chosen to focus on Tylenol Cold/Severe Congestion cool-burst caplets instead.

Just because Arizona's crystal meth has been around for years doesn't 
mean it's stagnant. In fact, in the past five years, two big things 
have happened.

First, meth-lab busts in the state have dropped 68 percent since 2000 
-- meaning, police believe, that far fewer addicts are cooking their own stuff.

Second, in that same period, Arizona has seen a 62 percent increase 
in people seeking treatment for meth addiction -- meaning more 
Arizonans than ever are using, and are desperately seeking ways to stop.

Fewer people are cooking meth; more people are abusing meth.

But Arizona lawmakers aren't talking about that.

Instead, they're talking about Oklahoma, and pseudoephedrine.

A common ingredient in over-the-counter cold and flu medicine, 
pseudoephedrine was designed as a decongestant -- specifically, a 
decongestant that, unlike its predecessor, ephedrine, couldn't be 
easily made into crystal meth.

But meth addicts are nothing if not dogged, and many became skilled 
at extracting pseudoephedrine from Sudafed tablets, combining it with 
stuff like red phosphorous and iodine, and making meth right in their kitchens.

Such "tabletop" labs became all the rage in heartland states four 
years ago. Oklahoma, while heavily hit, was far from alone. Places 
like Missouri and Oregon were also decimated.

The effect was devastating. Labs can be hazardous to firefighters, 
toxic to kids, and destructive to neighborhoods.

And then there are meth addicts themselves: Many become paranoid, 
amoral and violent.

Oklahoma law enforcement busted 399 labs in 2000, according to Drug 
Enforcement Administration records. By 2003, that number was up to a 
staggering 1,068.

Desperate, state lawmakers seized on a bold plan to stop meth cooks. 
In April 2004, Oklahoma began restricting sales of any tablet 
containing pseudoephedrine, which basically meant Sudafed and 
Claritin-D. Customers had to go to a pharmacy and sign a logbook, and 
they were strictly limited to nine grams of the stuff per month.

There was no precedent for a law like that. But it worked.

In just two months, the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics announced that 
the number of meth-lab busts per month had dropped 71 percent. 
They've continued to drop since.

Newspapers around the country reported the stunning development, and 
in no time, six states passed similar legislation. Congress, too, is 
considering a bill. (Oregon went even further in August, by limiting 
pseudoephedrine purchases to customers with a valid prescription.)

Naturally, Arizona was interested.

After all, the state has a serious meth problem.

In 2003, for example, 40 percent of inmates at the Maricopa County 
Jail tested positive for meth -- a number that's more than doubled since 1999.

Recent studies from Quest Diagnostics, which administers workplace 
drug tests, show that Arizona has one of the country's highest rates 
of workers testing positive for meth.

And meth-related deaths are up sharply this year from 2004. (See 
"Meth Fatalities," Paul Rubin, November 3, 2005.)

Last winter, Representative Tom O'Halleran, a Republican from Sedona, 
introduced legislation modeled on the Oklahoma plan in the state 
House of Representatives.

But there was one good reason to resist the plan, made clear in law 
enforcement statistics.

Arizona didn't have a meth lab problem. It had a meth use problem.

In 2000, according to DEA records, Arizona discovered almost as many 
tabletop labs as Oklahoma: 384. Respectively, the states had the 
fifth and sixth highest number of busts in the country.

But while Oklahoma's numbers shot up in 2001, finally peaking in 2003 
thanks to its pseudoephedrine laws, Arizona busts started declining 
in 2001, for entirely different reasons.

They've steadily decreased every year since.

Last year, according to DEA statistics, Arizona reported just 122 
meth-lab busts statewide. That's a drop of 68 percent from 2000 -- 
virtually the same as Oklahoma's more recent success, only without 
any tough new laws.

Even though Oklahoma's law has been in effect for more than a year, 
in fact, Arizona continues to see fewer meth-lab busts. And that's 
despite having some two million more residents than Oklahoma.

There are a few possible explanations for the decrease.

One may be that Arizona has had a pseudoephedrine law for years. It's 
not as tough as Oklahoma's, and it hasn't earned any headlines, but 
since 1999, it's been a felony in Arizona to buy or sell more than 24 
grams of the stuff in a single purchase. Clerks can also face jail 
time if they sell pseudoephedrine to anyone they know plans to make 
meth out of it.

Police, too, worked hard to get the word out about tabletop labs. 
Phoenix Police Sergeant Don Sherrard, who supervises meth-lab busts, 
says that a federal grant allowed the department to get the message 
out: Information about the dangers of meth labs was printed on 
grocery bags and presented to community groups.

The public responded.

Neighbors of meth cooks, Sherrard says, "started calling us more. And 
we did put quite a few people in jail."

Perhaps the biggest reason, though, is one that few people outside 
the drug trade would see as a plus: Addicts aren't cooking meth 
anymore because they don't have to.

Instead, they can just buy the stuff ready-made, from dealers with a 
Mexican connection.

Of the half-dozen current and former meth addicts who discussed their 
use with New Times, only one had ever attempted to manufacture meth, 
and that was years ago.

"Are you kidding?" asked one, a 20-year-old kid named Joe who's been 
using since his freshman year in high school. "Nobody even knows how 
to make it."

The survey, while admittedly unscientific, is backed up by the DEA.

"These Mexican gangs are providing hundreds, if not thousands, of 
pounds of meth," says Tom Marble, clandestine lab coordinator for the 
DEA's Phoenix division. "A large number of labs have closed. But more 
people than ever are addicted to meth.

"In reality, the Mexican meth outnumbers the local stuff 100 to 1 -- 
and it's introduced people to using who'd never dream of making their own."

And it's not just in border states like Arizona.

It's even happening now in Oklahoma.

As part of a series on crystal meth, the Portland Oregonian reported 
earlier this year that Oklahoma's pseudoephedrine laws had brought 
about an unexpected consequence. Drug investigators told the 
newspaper that immediately after the laws went into effect, the 
Mexican cartels moved in.

And why not? The laws may have decimated the drug supply, but the 
demand was still huge.

Indeed, despite all the ink that's been spilled on the success of 
Oklahoma's legislation, it's worth remembering that the oft-cited "71 
percent reduction" measures one thing only: the number of meth-lab busts.

There's been no correlation, in Oklahoma, to a drop in meth use.

Property crime hasn't dropped, nor have arrests for use.

Tucson Police Captain David Neri attended a recent conference where 
he heard from fellow officers in states where Oklahoma-style 
legislation has been approved.

"They all demonstrated drastic reduction in the tabletop labs," Neri 
says. "But the sad truth is that the usage stats don't change."

In every case, Mexican gangs moved in to sate the demand.

By earlier this year, it should have been clear to anyone studying 
the meth issue that Arizona had a problem that Oklahoma-style 
legislation wasn't going to fix.

Drugs coming from Mexico. People using. People needing treatment.

But no one in Arizona government seemed particularly interested in 
studying the problem. No one was discussing the issues of use and abuse.

What they were talking about was additional restrictions for 
pseudoephedrine. Just like Oklahoma.

The chief proponent of adopting the Oklahoma laws here has been 
Attorney General Terry Goddard. He got the plan endorsed by no fewer 
than 50 law enforcement agencies, including every county attorney in 
the state except one. (The holdout? Maricopa County's own Andy 
Thomas, who did not return calls for comment.)

Goddard even teamed up with a Republican, state Representative 
O'Halleran, to sell the plan in the House. It helped that O'Halleran 
is a former narcotics detective.

But though O'Halleran introduced the legislation, Republican 
leadership assigned it to three different committees, none of whose 
leaders would give it a hearing, much less a vote.

Meanwhile, the state Senate passed a weaker version. The Senate plan, 
proposed by Barbara Leff (R-Paradise Valley), was notable for its 
harsh punishment of meth cooks who worked with children present: They 
would face sentences as lengthy as child molesters, with a 
presumption of 20 years in prison and no chance of probation.

But while Leff's bill limited purchases to nine grams of tablet 
pseudoephedrine, it junked the idea of the logbook. And that 
nine-gram limit was per purchase, not per month.

To Goddard, who was intent on nothing less than the full Oklahoma 
plan, that was a total cop-out.

"It's not even halfway there," he says.

When Leff's version was sent to the House for its approval, 
O'Halleran made his last stand. He tacked on amendments, adding the 
logbook and the "per month" requirement.

The House easily approved the plan.

But Leff had the last word. The amended version was sent back to her 
to see if she'd agree to the changes.

She wouldn't.

The new state law would have no logbook and no new per-month limit.

In interviews with New Times, both Goddard and O'Halleran blamed 
lobbyists for the retailers associations and pharmaceutical companies.

And both groups, admittedly, fought O'Halleran's bill. But Leff says 
they had nothing to do with her personal feelings about it.

"I think what the attorney general wanted was stupid," she says. "I 
have done my homework. We shouldn't make laws that sound good when we 
know they aren't going to work."

But though Leff thought she'd settled the issue, she had a rude 
awakening ahead, as did the retailer and food marketing associations.

Goddard was so intent on getting tougher pseudoephedrine laws that he 
couldn't even wait for the next legislative session. He didn't wait 
until Leff's plan became law, on October 31.

In an interview with New Times, he notes that 60 percent of cases 
handled by Child Protective Services involve parents using meth. 
(That's different from making meth, but he doesn't mention that.)

"It is horrifying," Goddard says. "It is every day. And it has to 
stop. I don't believe we have the luxury of waiting another year."

Beginning in late summer, Goddard made a series of visits to cities 
around the state and asked them to pass ordinances of their own -- 
just like the Oklahoma law.

In his presentation to Phoenix leaders this past August, Goddard 
didn't mention the falling numbers of meth labs. He didn't talk about 
people who need treatment.

He talked about children found in meth labs, dirty and desperate. (In 
the past six years, investigators have found 263 children in Maricopa 
County labs, according to records provided by the Phoenix Police Department.)

"We don't solve the problem by cutting back on pseudoephedrine," 
Goddard acknowledged. "But we do make a tremendous impact."

In September, the Phoenix City Council approved the legislation. 
Sedona, Pinetop, Tucson and Scottsdale have since followed suit. 
Glendale is also considering it.

"If you know you have a solution to the problem," asks Phoenix City 
Councilman Dave Siebert, "how can you not do it?"

The legislation Goddard pushed for the state would have only 
restricted tablet-form pseudoephedrine, leaving out the majority of 
products that use the ingredient, which are liquids and gel caps. 
That's what Oklahoma did, after all.

But after he pushed the Phoenix City Council to act, the council 
decided to do more.

Much more.

The idea came from the cops.

Sherrard, the Phoenix police sergeant, advised the city council on 
its pseudoephedrine ordinance. And, like any good cop, he thought it 
might be better to be ahead of the curve.

He'd seen meth cooks evolve to get around new laws before -- the 
blister packs that Sudafed is sold in, in fact, were created because 
no one thought tweakers would have the patience to pop out thousands 
of tablets before cooking them. But the clever cooks actually devised 
a machine to do the popping.

"They're ingenious," Sherrard says.

So he suggested the Phoenix City Council go a little further. With 
tablets banned, meth cooks, he reasoned, were sure to turn to gel 
caps and liquid cold medicines with pseudoephedrine. He asked the 
council to restrict those, too.

"For the first time in law enforcement history, I thought we could be 
a little proactive instead of playing catch-up," he says. (Iowa, too, 
was ahead of the curve, passing laws to restrict all pseudoephedrine 
earlier this year.)

But a study published in the DEA-funded Microgram Journal in January 
2005 suggests that Sherrard's idea of "proactive" may be closer to 
"over-the-top."

Funded by McNeil Consumer & Specialty Pharmaceuticals, which makes 
Tylenol, the study reported that, yes, virtually any form of 
pseudoephedrine -- liquid cold medicines, gel caps, even combo 
products like Tylenol Cold that are packed with other active 
ingredients -- could eventually be turned into crystal meth.

But it wouldn't be cheap: By the time Sudafed is converted to meth, 
about half of the pseudoephedrine is left.

For medicine like Tylenol Cold/Severe Congestion, it's more like 5 
percent, according to the Microgram study.

And that's in a controlled lab, using the best practices available. 
Some law enforcement tests have only been able to get a 25 percent 
yield from Sudafed; their results from products like Tylenol Cold 
would likely be even lower.

Police officers in both Tucson and Phoenix admit they're not actually 
seeing such products in meth labs. Neither does the DEA.

"The source really hasn't changed," Marble says. "They're using 
blister packs of Sudafed."

But the Phoenix City Council wasn't talking about any of that. At the 
committee meeting to discuss the proposed ordinance, the idea of 
applying the restrictions to all pseudoephedrine was taken as a given.

The ordinances passed unanimously.

Beginning this week, as they go into effect, hundreds of products 
untouched by Oklahoma's law will be affected.

Bashas' grocery stores, for example, sell 156 different products with 
pseudoephedrine, from Dimetapp to Motrin, says Karen Giroux, director 
of regulatory agency relations for the Chandler-based chain.

They'll all have to move behind the counter. In every case, customers 
will have to sign the log.

Giroux says Bashas' has decided to stop carrying a large percentage 
of the products.

"We just don't have space for all of them," she says.

To politicians who haven't read the studies, who assume all cold 
medicine is one easy step away from crystal meth, a decision like 
that counts as good news.

"If we can get it down to just six products with pseudoephedrine, I 
think that's great," says Phoenix Councilman Siebert. "Instead of a 
dozen, let's only have a few."

Even if it wasn't just the inconvenience to consumers, though, there 
may be another unintended consequence of including so many products.

It involves the logbook.

Unlike in Oklahoma, where customers only had to sign when they were 
buying Sudafed or Claritin-D, customers in Phoenix will have to sign 
when they purchase things like Tylenol Cold.

Or Robitussin.

Or 150 other products.

It's going to be a fat book.

The ordinance requires the stores to fax the contents of the logbook 
to the police department each month. But the city council didn't 
earmark any funds for a database to record them, or even an officer 
to punch the data into a computer.

At this point, it's unclear how the reams of paper will be processed 
-- or if they will be processed, at all.

"Hey, the ordinance says they have to send it to the chief of the 
police," says Sherrard. "That means it's not my problem."

He's joking, of course, but he admits the city doesn't have a plan in 
place, yet.

"We'd like to come up with a database," he says. "But it's not going 
to be easy."

Even while Arizona lawmakers work feverishly to stop the state's few 
remaining meth labs, the state's meth use problem festers.

Unlike the lab issue, it's not easy to get sound bites about the 
direness of this situation. In some cases, it's impossible even to 
get a returned phone call.

Instead, on the questions of prevention, key state agencies seem to 
have dropped the ball.

The one part of O'Halleran's bill that might have had a big impact -- 
funding a major meth prevention initiative, targeted at kids ages 6 
to 16 -- is the one piece that's been virtually forgotten today.

Leff's bill asked the state to identify successful meth prevention 
programs in other states and try to implement them here. It also 
called for the state to solicit donations to take on the issue of 
meth prevention and distribute them to worthy nonprofit companies.

But even though Governor Napolitano signed the bill into law, she 
doesn't appear to have put anyone on the case. Her spokeswoman knew 
nothing about any effort to identify such programs or fund them.

The state health department's Office of Tobacco Education and 
Prevention Program ran a highly successful anti-tobacco campaign in 
the mid-to late '90s. It achieved a 24 percent drop in the number of 
kids smoking.

But the health department hasn't attempted a similar campaign on meth 
use. "That's a law enforcement issue," says spokesman Mike Murphy.

The governor's substance abuse division, too, has hardly been active: 
It hasn't updated its "events calendar" in more than a year.

Despite repeated requests over a three-week period, Napolitano's 
substance abuse division director, Rob Evans, declined an interview 
to discuss what his staff is doing about meth.

It may be because they're just not doing all that much.

Indeed, even though arrest statistics show that meth has been a 
serious problem in Arizona for at least eight years, the state has 
yet to even accurately assess the problem. Lawmakers have been 
content to trot out the same sound bites instead of taking the time 
to figure out what's really going on.

Take, for example, the oft-repeated claim that Arizona leads the 
nation in meth use for kids ages 12 to 17.

That's a number that Attorney General Goddard consistently uses in 
presentations and promotional material, attributing it to U.S. 
Surgeon General Richard Carmona. The Arizona Republic has repeated it 
no less than five times.

The problem? It's totally bogus.

Goddard's spokeswoman, Andrea Esquer, says the source of the claim is 
a speech that Carmona made in Tucson last March.

But Carmona's planned remarks for the event show what he actually 
said: Arizona youth are tops when it comes to all stimulant use -- 
which includes meth, yes, but also cocaine. The Tucson Citizen, which 
covered the event, quotes Carmona stating just that.

As it turns out, the study Carmona was citing measures stimulant use 
as a whole, says Leah Young, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Health and 
Human Services Department. It doesn't have a breakdown for meth.

It's a small example, but indicative of the bigger issue: No one in 
Arizona has bothered to quantify what the state's problem is.

That makes it hard to tell which plans are working, much less find a 
big-picture solution.

Take, for instance, the Partnership for a Drug-Free America's pilot 
project for meth and Ecstasy health education.

Phoenix was one of two cities chosen for the project, which uses 
pediatricians to get information about the dangers of meth to 
teenagers. (The other city was St. Louis.)

The Partnership found amazing results for Ecstasy, says Arizona 
program director Shelly Mowrey. "From 2002 to 2004, Ecstasy use went 
down 56 percent among high school students," she says. "We were just 
jumping up and down."

The meth initiative didn't cause a similar reaction. The Arizona 
Criminal Justice Commission Youth Use Survey, an exhaustive study of 
eighth, 10th, and 12th graders, doesn't ask about crystal meth 
directly -- only the more generic "stimulants."

The 2004 survey shows that stimulant use is actually up from 2002, 
from 2.2 percent to 3 percent of high school seniors.

But because "stimulant" is the category in question, it's not clear 
what that means. Are more kids trying meth? Do kids even know that 
meth is, technically, a stimulant?

"The numbers on meth are kind of sketchy," Mowrey admits.

The Partnership talked to the survey leaders and asked them to break 
out meth as a topic for questioning in the future, Mowrey says. They've agreed.

But even with that change, 2006 will be the earliest data available. 
It won't be until 2008 that researchers will be able to tell if use 
is rising or falling.

By then, Arizona's meth crisis will be in its 10th year.

As of this week, the result of Arizona's fight against meth should be 
on display at drugstores and grocers across Phoenix.

The shelves that once held hundreds of name-brand decongestants, with 
endless varieties of day or night, cold and/or flu, children's versus 
extra strength, are basically down to one option: Sudafed PE.

Sudafed PE is Pfizer's tweaker-proof decongestant. It's 
pseudoephedrine-free -- the first product to hit the market that 
proudly proclaims it doesn't contain the key ingredient in crystal 
meth. (Instead, it uses an ingredient called phenylephrine, which is 
where the "PE" comes from.)

The new medication has earned Pfizer plenty of good ink. In press 
interviews, Terry Goddard and other politicians have praised Sudafed 
PE as an alternative to regular Sudafed.

In their telling, the new option is the perfect example of why 
ordinances like Phoenix's won't hit consumers too hard.

"It's a new product that has no meth-producing ingredients," Goddard 
told KAET-TV's Michael Grant on air in April. "Those will be 
available if this bill passes, no problems for consumers. They have 
exactly the same diagnostic or medicine effect."

But Sudafed PE is actually the perfect example of why ordinances like 
Phoenix's will hit consumers.

Because, despite what Goddard says, there's good indication the new 
stuff doesn't work.

Pfizer tried for years to develop a form of pseudoephedrine that 
couldn't be made into meth, spokeswoman Erica Johnson says, spending 
millions of dollars in the process. But that effort proved 
impossible, and the company abandoned it, as Johnson confirms.

Only then did Pfizer roll out Sudafed PE.

Not because the development process worked.

But because it didn't.

To make PE, Pfizer simply replaced pseudoephedrine with an agent 
called phenylephrine. Like pseudoephedrine, phenylephrine has been 
approved for use since 1972, when the Food and Drug Administration 
first set the rules for over-the-counter medications.

It's been rarely used in oral decongestants since. And there's good reason why.

Leslie Hendeles, a doctor of pharmacy at the University of Florida, 
says the existing research indicates clearly that it doesn't work.

Hendeles, who compared phenylephrine and pseudoephedrine for 
Pharmacology in 1993, says the studies are clear: Phenylephrine is 
absorbed rapidly into the liver. Only 38 percent of the medicine 
makes it into the bloodstream -- which is key for it to work.

Plus, the FDA only allows a dose of 10 milligrams of phenylephrine in 
any over-the-counter product. That's one-sixth of what's allowed for 
pseudoephedrine.

At that level, Hendeles says, phenylephrine is no better than a placebo.

"In my scientific opinion, at the allowable dose, not enough gets 
into the bloodstream to be effective as a decongestant," he says. "As 
a topical nasal solution, it's very effective. But as an oral 
product, it's not going to work."

Pfizer spokeswoman Erica Johnson acknowledges that the company has no 
scientific studies showing that the new Sudafed PE works. 
(Anecdotally, she says consumers claim "comparable relief.")

Because the new product is sold over the counter, the FDA confirms, 
the company won't have to do any studies.

But most customers don't know that. And that gives Sudafed PE an 
enviable place on the shelves: In Phoenix, it will be one of the only 
decongestants that customers don't have to request from clerks or 
sign a logbook to purchase.

Its development may be one reason Pfizer -- far from trying to block 
pseudoephedrine restrictions, as some politicians have suggested -- 
actually supported ordinances like Phoenix's.

Pfizer says the company's position on laws like Phoenix's is a matter 
of fairness.

"Our position has always been, 'If you're going to put 
pseudoephedrine products behind the counter, you've got to put all 
pseudoephedrine products behind the counter,'" says spokeswoman 
Johnson. "All forms. Tablets, gels, and liquids."

It's a strategy that seems to be working. In April, Target became the 
first company to voluntarily put all products behind the counter. 
Walgreens followed suit later this spring, spokeswoman Carol Hively says.

Johnson says the company will continue to offer regular Sudafed 
behind the counter. "Some customers may not find enough relief with 
Sudafed PE," she says. "They can choose to return to the stuff with 
pseudoephedrine."

But in some cases, they may not have the choice.

A number of drug companies, including Tylenol's maker, quickly 
realized the benefits of making a pseudoephedrine-free product. They 
plan to reformulate their products to take out pseudoephedrine in 
time for next year's cold season, says McNeil spokeswoman Kathy Fallon.

"They realize customers are not always going to think to ask for this 
stuff if it's behind the counter," says Jenny Van Amburgh, a doctor 
of pharmacy at Northeastern University.

"It's definitely an access issue."

The inaugural meeting of the Phoenix City Council meth task force 
attracted serious media attention.

No fewer than eight television cameras were packed into the small 
conference room. At least a half-dozen print journalists scribbled 
into their notebooks.

The membership included all the right players: representatives from 
the police department, treatment community, and politicians.

Attorney General Goddard spoke about the "crisis in our midst."

He repeated that statistic about how Arizona is number one in meth 
use for kids ages 12 to 17. "I don't think we've even got an idea of 
how prevalent it is in our communities," he said.

The task force members were seated around a table, and each one got a 
chance to speak. Each talked about the ravages of meth. Each 
expressed hope that the new legislation would help.

And then Jeffrey Taylor spoke. Outreach coordinator for the Phoenix 
Rescue Mission, he sees the poorest and most desperate meth users every day.

He talked about needing more treatment options in jail. He talked 
about how Arizona needs more inpatient rehab centers.

And everyone nodded, and smiled, and then went back to pseudoephedrine.

Some members have bounced around ideas since. One of Mayor Phil 
Gordon's aides found a video online called "Meth Is Death." It was 
put together by the Knox County Attorney General's Office, in 
Tennessee; some Phoenix officials have discussed doing a local version here.

The task force meeting, though, was in August.

And the only thing they've done since is hold a press conference, a 
TV-ready affair in front of a home busted in April as the site of a meth lab.

The sole topic: Phoenix's new pseudoephedrine ordinance, and their 
next goal -- making it state law.