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Monday, June 20, 2011

Tenn. opts for tracking system, not prescription law, to fight meth; officials say 'smurfs' will prevail

Tennessee pharmacies have until Jan. 1 to comply with a new law requiring participation in NPLEx, a free regional tracking system for pseudoephedrine purchases, Brian Haas of The Tennessean reports. Legislators declined to make methamphetamine's key ingredient, pseudoephedrine, prescription-only, instead opting "for a system used in Kentucky, as stricter cap on how much pseudoephedrine-based, over-the-counter drugs a person can buy in a day."

While the new law does include "new limits on pseudoephedrine purchases, new fines for manufacturing meth and strengthening child endangerment laws to include meth laboratories," Haas reports, some say it "will do little to curb the meth-manufacturer practice of 'smurfing'– recruiting other people to buy small amounts of pseudoephedrine to contribute to a meth batch."

"We basically have a whole cottage industry out of here of people who do nothing but go around and buy ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, " Tommy Farmer, director of the Tennessee Methamphetamine Task Force, told Haas. "They run under the radar by not exceeding those legal limits, those thresholds." (Read more)

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