‘Ice’ lab bill would log
cold-medicine purchases

An Oklahoma law inspires other
states to follow suit in the war
vs. crystal meth

Across the country, authorities are engaged in a desperate fight to shut down thousands of secret, sometimes mobile labs producing crystal meth.

In the vast regions where wide open spaces reign, authorities scour the landscape for the signs of illegal drug production -- the chemical stench of a lab sequestered in a rural home or a strange exhaust trailing a truck or motor home roaming aimlessly over miles of empty highway.

But Hawaii remains a state of users, not producers.

While clandestine labs are also a growing problem in Hawaii, the state has yet to catch up with the rest of the country for production of crystal methamphetamine, known in the islands as "ice."

And authorities are hoping to keep it that way.

A Lingle administration bill currently before the Senate Judiciary and Hawaiian Affairs Committee is targeted at making it harder for would-be ice cookers to find the raw ingredients they need to make the drug.

The measure would require some nonprescription cold medicines containing ephedrine, pseudoephedrine or phenylpropanolamine to be kept behind pharmacists' counters. Purchasers would also be limited to nine grams of the products and need to register when they buy the drugs.

The law would not affect gel capsules, liquids and other forms of the medicines authorities have found cannot be used to make ice.

An 80 percent drop in meth lab seizures in Oklahoma -- less than a year after a similar law took effect there last spring -- has caught the eye of many of the nation's leaders. Late last month, a bill was submitted in Congress that would control pseudoephedrine on the federal level.

Ice made its first appearance in the United States in Hawaii, arriving from Southeast Asia during the 1980s.

Today the state leads the nation in the number of arrestees testing positive for the drug -- about 45 percent, according to U.S. Attorney Edward Kubo Jr.

Up to 95 percent of ice in Hawaii originates in Mexico and is processed in the U.S. Southwest, Kubo said.

About 30 labs -- including sites where only the chemicals were found -- were seized in Hawaii statewide last year.

And while the discovery of any of the toxic, potentially explosive labs in the state is alarming, that number is relatively low.

Authorities in Oklahoma said their state averaged about 105 meth lab busts per month before their cold medicine control law went into effect.

The structure of Hawaii's communities, where houses are nestled too closely together to hide the pungent smell of ice production, seem to be a deterrent for lab producers.

Still, the problem is growing. This year's figure includes the first bust on a military base, Kubo said.

And in the last five years, illegal labs have become particularly troubling for the Big Island, which possesses precisely the open, patrol-free spaces ice producers require.

The Big Island has only one police officer for every 140 square miles, Kubo said.

However, some members of the state's food and drug industry have argued that the bill before the Senate would put an unfair administrative burden on retailers, many of whom have already begun measures to control thefts of the cold medicines by placing them in high-visibility areas, close to checkout stands.

In testimony to the committee Tuesday, Edward Thompson of the Hawaii Food Industry Association said the measure "is aimed at punishing all retailers and all consumers."

"It simply does not make sense, unless one thinks like law enforcement, who is looking for the easy way out for themselves," he said.

Thompson suggested instead that wholesalers and distributors be licensed to sell the drugs.

The measure continues to be considered by the Senate Committee on Judiciary and Hawaiian Affairs, which plans to issue a decision tomorrow.

Keith Kamita, chief of the state Narcotics Enforcement Division, said that even if the measure dies in committee, his department will continue to plug away at the issue.

As authorities become more successful in controlling imports of ice, the next natural step would be an increase in local production, he said.

"If we can enact this, even though we have a small number (of labs), this could be our silver bullet," Kamita said.