Oklahoma stores begin removing banned cold medications from shelves

Friday, April 9th 2004, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) -- Drug stores across Oklahoma have begun removing cold medications with the ingredient pseudoephedrine from their shelves and placing them behind the pharmacy counter after state lawmakers restricted sales of the drug used in the manufacture of methamphetamine.

Mika Smith, manager of Liberty Drug in Chickasha, said Friday the store had already moved its stock of the cold pills.

Smith was glad the new regulations had passed, but said her store was already wary of pseudoephedrine sales.

"We've regulated it anyway," Smith said. "If someone comes in and wants five boxes of pseudoephedrine, we explain to them that we have to monitor that. And we've been doing that for years."

The Legislature passed the bill's emergency clause, meaning it takes effect immediately. The law also requires customers to show a driver's license or state-issued photo identification card and sign for their purchase.

Oklahoma is the first state to place such stringent rules on pseudoephedrine sales.

"It'll be an extra step, but if it's going to help clean up some of the extra junk out there, I think it'll be worth it," Smith said.

Stores with pharmacies will have 60 days to make sure all of the cold medications are behind the counter or locked up and to create a logging procedure for the signatures, addresses, and products sold, said John Duncan of the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs.

Convenience stores and other locations without pharmacies have 30 days to dispose properly of the pills they have in stock. Convenience stores can no longer sell pseudoephedrine tablets if they do not have a pharmacist.

Medicines including Sudafed and Claritin-D have pseudoephedrine as an ingredient.

Duncan said authorities were trying to inform stores of the new policy and planned to work with them to enforce the law.

"We're trying to get these guys on board instead of just rushing out and arresting people," Duncan said.

The law does not apply to gel capsules, liquid capsules or other liquid preparations of pseudoephedrine. Pseudoephedrine tablets can easily be used to make methamphetamine.

"If you can bake a cake, you can cook meth," Duncan said.

Duncan said he has already spoken to officials from California, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Louisiana and Arkansas who want to mimic Oklahoma's law for their state.

Carol Hively, a spokeswoman for Deerfield, Ill.-based Walgreen Co., said the drugstore chain has developed a system to make sales of the medicine simpler for customers.

Hively said the 62 Walgreens stores in Oklahoma will place tags on the shelves showing pictures of the packages that used to sit there. Customers will be able to tear off the tags, printed in both English and Spanish, and take them to a pharmacist to retrieve their cold medicine.

"We don't know what customer reaction will be," Hively said.

She said it was also too soon to guess what other impact the law might have on the drug stores.

John Sensabaugh, spokesman for Largo, Fla.-based Eckerd Corp., said the company's 33 Oklahoma stores will meet the requirements of the law, but Eckerd is still determining what procedures it will use. The Eckerd stores were sold to Woonsocket, R.I.-based CVS Corp. earlier this week.

Larry Adams, pharmacist at Barrett Drug Center in Edmond, said the law wouldn't have a major impact on his store, where most of the medicine sold goes through a pharmacist anyway.

He said the drug store may cut back on some tablet forms of pseudoephedrine if it carries a gel cap form of the drug.

He said the restrictions on pseudoephedrine are overdue in the fight to stop meth.

"If we can get it out of the hands that do the manufacturing illegally," Adams said, "then that's a good thing."