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DRUG RULES SLIPPED INTO PATRIOT ACT

The USA Patriot Act, up for renewal later this month, could become the vehicle by which Americans' cold medications come under new, intrusive regulations.

In May, we opposed a proposal by Sen.  Dianne Feinstein to regulate over-the-counter cold medicines that contain ingredients that can be used in making illegal methamphetamine.  The regulation, we believed, was intrusive on personal freedom and likely to be ineffective in significantly reducing meth production.

The idea has found its way into the renewal legislation for the Patriot Act, now being debated.  Under the proposed measure, people suffering from colds will have to "show a photo ID and sign a logbook" to buy cold medications containing the decongestant pseudoephedrine, reported the Dec.  10 San Francisco Chronicle.  The efforts are aimed at reducing pseudoephedrine supplies to "kitchen lab" methamphetamine makers, who are known to buy large quantities of cold medications at drugstores.

There are two troubling aspects to the proposal's inclusion in the Patriot Act, which is centered on the war on terrorism.  For one, that the measure is included at all is based on the loose reasoning that meth labs could fund terrorist activities.  It's a case where federal laws supposedly intended for one thing, i.e., the war on terrorism, end up being used for something else, in this instance the war on drugs.

Secondly, the law itself -- as was Sen.  Feinstein's original proposal - -- is of questionable value.  The Chronicle noted that most drugs used in making meth come not from the corner drugstore, but are "shipped in from Canada, Mexico and other countries, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration," so the new law "is likely to have a modest impact" on the meth supply.

We urge Congress to oppose including this intrusive, futile provision in the Patriot Act.