April 15--A newly implemented tracking system meant to combat meth in Indiana is actually hampering efforts to stop its production, says the Indiana State Police.
ISP reports seizing 263 labs statewide in the first two months of this year, a 20 percent jump over that same time period a year ago, according to the most recently available data.
But rather than indicating strides made against methamphetamine production, officials view that number as evidence that labs continue to increase throughout Indiana.
"If you look at our lab seizures, that tells the whole story," said 1st Sgt. Niki Crawford of ISP's Meth Suppression Section. "So it's completely changed the way we do things, but not in a good way."
But backers of the new measure argue that, in just its first three months, the law has prevented the sale of more than 30,000 boxes of cold medicine containing a key ingredient to producing methamphetamine.
And the bill's author dismisses the ISP's complaints, saying the agency is "really biased" because officials there wanted such medications available by prescription only.
"Of course, they're not going to admit when it's working," Sen. Carlin Yoder, a Republican from Middlebury, said of the new initiative.
"There's been one group consistently fighting against this tooth and nail, and that's been the state police."
Fighting a trend
A record total of nearly 1,400 meth labs were seized in Indiana in 2010, the fifth straight year the total had climbed.
It was against that backdrop that lawmakers, law enforcement personnel, medical representatives and others debated during last year's legislative session what could be done to combat the trend.
They quickly honed in on pseudoephedrine, a common cold-medicine ingredient that's also a key ingredient in meth.
State police were among the vocal supporters who backed legislative proposals that called for a doctor's prescription to obtain medicine containing pseudoephedrine. The department responds to 97 percent of meth labs in the state.
They pointed to other states with electronic-tracking systems and cited statistics that showed it wouldn't decrease the number of meth labs, Crawford recalled last week. She pointed to Kentucky, which has had the system in place since June 2008, but has seen the total number of labs increase by 250 percent in that timeframe.
But opponents, including representatives from the pharmaceutical industry and big-chain retailers, argued the measure would hamper consumers who wanted to buy the medications. The implication was that such an inconvenience could lower total sales.
They supported Yoder's legislation, which was eventually passed, that called for the computerized tracking of any sales of medicines containing pseudoephedrine. The legislator also cites the Indiana Sheriffs' Association's support of the measure.
Information would be taken from every person making such purchases, and the electronic tracking, provided at no cost to retailers or the state, would then recommend denying a sale if the transactions would exceed amounts set in state or federal law.
Retailers were mandated to start using the system at the beginning of this year.
For supporters of the measure, the tracking could not have been implemented at a better time. There were a record number of lab seizures -- 1,437 statewide -- again in 2011, leading to 1,420 arrests, according to ISP.
Blocking sales
Three full months into its implementation, the tracking system had blocked the purchase of 30,600 boxes of targeted medications because they would have exceeded state or federal limits, according to a press release issued this month by the National Association of Drug Diversion Investigators.
That means 70,000 grams have been prevented from "potentially being diverted by meth criminals," said the release from the nonprofit association, which bills itself as facilitating "cooperation between law enforcement, health care professionals, state regulatory agencies and pharmaceutical manufacturers in the prevention and investigation of drug diversion."
The stats are even broken down by county and retailer. The association says 110 boxes of such medications were blocked from sale in Cass County in January through March.
To Yoder, those numbers clearly show the system is making an impact.
"I think it's worked fantastic," he said. "We've stopped 30,000 boxes from being sold."
He said he had received positive feedback from the sheriff's association, pharmacies that have implemented the new system and doctors who don't have to write prescriptions for the medications.
The association who released the figures also touted the program as having a dramatic impact.
"In a very short period of time, Indiana's real-time, stop-sale technology is proving to be an undeniable success," said Charles Cichon, executive director of the National Association of Drug Diversion Investigators, in the press release.
Cichon is also program director of the National Precursor Log Exchange, the electronic tracking program now used in Indiana, according to information on the NADDI website.
He could not be reached for comment Friday.
The tracking program is provided free of charge to states, with its costs instead being covered by "the manufacturers of the medicines," according to the National Precursor Log Exchange website.
Materials available online at www.michiganpharmacists.org provide more information on those backers. Michigan also went to the electronic-tracking system this year.
National Precursor Log Exchange documents on that site list the exchange's sponsors as eight pseudoephedrine manufacturers, including such well-known names as Bayer.
Crawford said she thinks the association's recent media release did not portray the whole picture related to the new system. She also said the group's release of specific numbers violated state statute.
Negative impact
ISP officials agree that the law has had an impact, but they say it isn't a positive one.
Most meth makers have what law enforcement refers to as a "smurf" group supplying them with pseudoephedrine -- a ring of people who go to stores and buy the medications containing that precursor.
In the past, investigators often watched smurf groups of four to six people supplying a single cook, Crawford said. But with the new rules, more people are needed to buy the same amount of medication, meaning the smurf rings now often include 10 to 12 people.
That means more people involved in the drug trade, Crawford said.
"We have people sitting in parking lots and asking complete strangers to go buy medicine," she said.
The going rate for medications containing pseudoephedrine is $50 a box, she said.
But it's not uncommon for meth makers to not have enough cash on hand, so they end up paying smurfs in product, said Crawford.
"So you've made them either a drug dealer or a drug user," she said.
And with more smurfs, the department finds that more children are getting mixed up in the trade. People buying the medications seem increasingly to be taking their children with them, then along to the place where the meth is being made, Crawford said.
In 2011, 369 children were found in lab environments at the time arrests were being made, according to ISP statistics. That was an increase of nearly 29 percent over 2010.
The early 2012 numbers are even higher. Through the first two months, 80 children have been found in those environments, a 20 percent increase over last year's record pace.
The system also makes investigation more difficult by blocking sales that could be criminal, Crawford said. So police can't track down buyers later and use the violations to arrest them, search their dwellings to possibly find labs and get them to supply information on others involved in the trade, said the ISP official.
She said ISP told legislators last year of the importance of being able to charge smurfs.
"It's just really hard to explain to someone not in law enforcement why we should allow a criminal violation to occur," Crawford said.
Investigators adapt
The new state law has changed the way ISP fights meth production, but the department is working to adapt, Crawford said.
The agency continues to put an emphasis on building community relationships that can generate tips and provide cooperation to ferreting out meth makers, she said. That applies to everyone from citizens to local law enforcement to Department of Child Services officials.
And police are working to use the information collected by the tracking system in any way they can, Crawford said.
"Right now, we can't get a criminal violation out of the system," she said. "We're using it as a tool. We have other information there."
She said the department expected a spike to occur with the implementation of the new law, but the police just have to enforce what's on the books.
"Unfortunately, we saw it in Oklahoma," Crawford said, referencing the increase in meth labs she says other states with the system have experienced. "We saw it in Kentucky. We saw it in Arkansas. ... But you know what, they wanted to try it. They wanted to see if it worked.
"We'll deal with whatever laws they pass."
Yoder was critical of the ISP. He said the department needed to give the new system a chance before criticizing it.
"Let's give it a year," she said. "It's only been mandated since January. If you can show me in a year it's not working, then we'll look at it."
--Dustin Kass is associate editor of the Pharos-Tribune. He can be reached at 574-732-5150 or [email protected].
Copyright 2012 - Pharos-Tribune, Logansport, Ind.
