If you've recently been perplexed after being asked for your ID while buying Sudafed or similar cold medicines, you've been screened for methamphetamine use. Active ingredients, namely pseudoephedrine, in these over the counter medicines can be used to produce methamphetamine, AKA “meth,”
a potent stimulant that increases users’ alertness with side effects
like hyperthermia, convulsions, brain aneurysms, strokes, arrhythmia,
extreme violence, and severe dental problems.
To stem the tide of meth pouring into communities, most states passed
laws that moved products containing pseudoephedrine off the shelf.
Customers must now ask a pharmacist for the medicine who is then required to
log the purchaser’s name and can only dispense limited quantities. But
paper logs did little to help because meth producers could visit
multiple pharmacies, purchasing the maximum at each.
Arkansas is one of several states that has moved their record keeping of pseudoephedrine to electronic logbooks that electronically link pharmacies to each other. The state turned to contractor Leadsonlabs to create a system that would meet their diverse needs.
Chad Vander Veen of Government Technology wrote:
“There are two scenarios," Bill Clinton, operations administrator of the Arkansas Crime Information Center, explained. "For the larger chain pharmacies, many of them were already collecting this information, so LeadsOnlabs provided them interface specifications and they just submit their information from their systems to LeadsOnlabs. For the smaller pharmacies, there's a Web portal they can access and enter the information into that."
For example, when a shopper at an independently owned pharmacy wants to buy a product containing a meth precurser, the pharmacist first asks for the person's driver's license. Arkansas drivers' licenses feature a bar code that the pharmacist scans. The scan pulls all license data, and the pharmacist then enters it into the Web portal. At a larger chain pharmacy, manually entering license data isn't required. In both instances, the data is sent to a LeadsOnlabs database where it's crosschecked to determine whether the customer is eligible to purchase any of the products.
Other states have launched innovative approaches to combating the highly addictive and inexpensively produced methamphetamine.
In Cullman County, Alabama, the Sheriff is using Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking devices to focus on changing the habits of habitual meth users. The devices are connected to ankle bracelets that are actively beaming information 24 hours a day about the offender’s location. If an offender is not where he or she is supposed to be on a certain day, an agent with the Cullman County Narcotics Task Force is instantly notified. The offender is then picked up and returned to jail without bail.
The GPS units were purchased through a $1 million Alabama Sheriff Assistance grant, which was made available to every sheriff’s office in the state. So far, Cullman County is the fourth agency to take advantage of the innovative program.
But technology alone does little without the support of all key players in the system, said Patrick McCreless of The Cullman Times.
Sheriff Tyler Roden said the Cullman County district attorney’s office and county district judges are all on board with the tracking program. He said a judge would decide at a meth abuser’s bond hearing if he or she would wear the ankle bracelet.
Cullman County District Judge Kim Chaney said he was optimist about the tracking program. “It will free up jail space for more serious offenders,” Chaney said. “I consider it using technology to keep the community safer and to give offenders the opportunity to improve their lives.”
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