Controls sought for meth's main ingredient: cold pills

Growing problem in North Texas relies heavily on unchecked sales of the common drug
By THOMAS KOROSEC
Houston Chronicle



WICHITA FALLS - Convenience store owner Reza Vafaiyan says he follows a "three customer" rule. Three customers ask for an item, and he stocks it.


The red-hot seller lately in Vafaiyan's Krystal Mart has been pseudoephedrine. He had 81,000 pills in stock when a North Texas narcotics task force arrested him on drug charges this spring.


"I don't know and I don't really care what people do with it," the 55-year-old Iranian immigrant said recently from behind the counter of his cluttered, dimly lit store, which he has owned for eight years. "I just want their money."


Pseudoephedrine, a legal cold and allergy medicine sold under brand names such as Sudafed, is in extraordinary demand in Wichita Falls and elsewhere in the northern half of Texas, where authorities say the taste for the illegal and addictive drug methamphetamine has grown to epidemic proportions over the past five years.


The cold pills are the key ingredient in making meth in small, crude, clandestine labs. And they are so easily purchased that law enforcement officials, a chain-store manager and "meth cooks" alike say voluntary restrictions on its sale at major outlets such as Wal-Mart and Walgreens have had little success keeping it out of the illegal trade.


The mushrooming methamphetamine problem in this North Texas ranching and oil hub has Wichita County Criminal District Attorney Barry Macha, along with an East Texas legislator, calling for strict controls of pseudoephedrine sales in Texas.


"We're already late," Macha said.


Four out of five of the 360 narcotics cases filed by Macha's office in the first half of this year involved methamphetamine, he said.


"It isn't just here," he said. "It's all across North Texas, East Texas, and there's quite a bit in West Texas, too."



Oklahoma restricts sales after deadly confrontation



Macha would like to see Texas follow Oklahoma, which in April became the first state in the nation to outlaw over-the-counter sales of pseudoephedrine. The law was passed after an Oklahoma state trooper was shot and killed last year by a man cooking a supply of methamphetamine days after he had been released on bail from a previous meth-making charge.


Oklahoma treats pseudoephedrine as a controlled substance that can only be sold in small quantities by pharmacies. Customers must show photo identification and sign for their purchase.


"It's had a tremendous impact statewide," said Mark Woodward, spokesman for the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs.


After a 4,155 percent increase in the number of meth labs broken up in Oklahoma over the past decade ? from 29 in 1994 to 1,234 last year ? the number dropped to just 28 in May and 50 in June. In Texas, meth lab seizures grew from 20 in 1998 to 573 in 2003.


"The vast majority of these people are addicts cooking it for themselves, and they're gonna do what they can do to get the ingredients," Woodward said.


Since April, that has meant road trips across the Red River into Texas, or to Arkansas, to buy the chief ingredients, Woodward said.



Two-box limit sparks rampant shoplifting



Sgt. Jim Whitehead, commander of the North Texas Regional Narcotics Task Force, based in Wichita Falls, said more than a dozen Oklahoma residents have been arrested buying pseudoephedrine in the Wichita Falls area.


Under a Texas law passed in 2001, it is a second-degree felony to possess more than 9 grams of pseudoephedrine in conjunction with other common items used to make meth, such as lithium batteries, lighter fluid, rock salt and kitchen matches.


"We've had a number of cases where we've caught people from Oklahoma driving around with maps marking the locations of the Albertsons, the Wal-Mart, and so on," Whitehead said.


Those retailers have instituted policies limiting sales of the cold and allergy remedies to two boxes per customer. But many say the limits, while well-intentioned, are only a token defense.


Greg Ward, manager of a Walgreens on a busy corner a few blocks from the Sikes Senter regional mall, said he instituted a two-box limit about three years ago.


"As soon as we did that, we had to put them behind the sales counter," he said, explaining that shoplifting became rampant. "When they could buy 10 boxes, they didn't mind paying the price. When we limited the number, they couldn't steal it fast enough."


Ward said he suspects as much as 90 percent of the pseudoephedrine he sells is purchased to make meth.


"Nearly everyone who comes in for it buys two boxes and asks for a pack of cigarettes. We ID for cigarettes no matter who you are. You could be 70. When we do that, they usually say, 'Forget the cigarettes. Just give me the Sudafed.' "


Sales are highest on Fridays, he said. "I guess they're getting ready to make it on the weekend."


Woodward said retailers in Oklahoma tried package limits, too.


"It wasn't very beneficial," he said. "They'd buy two boxes, go back to another checker and buy two more, go across the street and buy two more."


In Wichita Falls, narcotics officers are making as many busts as they want staking out chain stores and waiting for cars or vans of people going store to store buying cold tablets. There have been at least five busts outside the Walgreens, said Ward.


Carla Brickner, a 37-year-old former meth user now in rehabilitation, said she was part of a group of meth cooks and was often a driver on trips to buy pseudoephedrine around town.


"They'd get 25 people to go in. There'd be so many people buying it they'd run out. They couldn't keep the shelves stocked," she said in an interview at the Serenity House of Wichita Falls, an outpatient drug treatment center.


While Wichita Falls' major retailers have limited cold medicine sales, smaller outlets often have been more permissive, some to the point of functioning as wholesale suppliers of meth ingredients.



Store's owner accused of supplying ingredients



Texas Department of Public Safety officers say Reza Vafaiyan's Krystal Mart, next to the red-brick buildings of a public housing neighborhood, is a stark example.


In November, an unnamed informant working for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration purchased five 35-pill bottles of MaxBrand pseudoephedrine tablets, three cans of starter fluid and an eight-pack of lithium batteries from Vafaiyan, according to one of several detailed search warrant affidavits sworn out by a DPS narcotics officer.


Vafaiyan loaded the items into a Budweiser box, took $137 for the purchase and "advised (the informant) that if he were caught with these items the bond would be $100,000."


Another informant described the Krystal Mart as a place for "one-stop shopping," the affidavit states, and on several occasions police stopped customers leaving the store loaded with cold tablets and other meth-making items.


The affidavits say meth cooks shopped at other stores as well and sometimes left Krystal Mart empty-handed because Vafaiyan was "too high on (the) price."


The warrants were issued in March and April after local, state and federal police followed Vafaiyan on his own shopping trip to Dallas. He stopped at 11 discount warehouse stores, an affidavit states, and purchased 87 boxes of Sudafed 240mg tablets, 120 bottles of MaxBrand 36-count pseudoephedrine tablets and six cases of starter fluid.


The task force, which arrested Vafaiyan as he returned to his modest house, seized $128,719 in cash from his store safe, $200,400 in cash from a safety deposit box and about $69,000 from several bank accounts. He had cases of pseudoephedrine pills in their original packaging at his store, stacked in a storeroom, behind the counter and in a broken ice machine.


"It's not against the law to have inventory," said Vafaiyan, who posted $25,000 in bail after spending 40 days in jail. He was arrested on two charges of possession with intent to manufacture.


Macha said the cases are pending before a grand jury. No indictments had been issued as of last week.


Vafaiyan, a talkative man who said his lawyer advised him not to discuss his case, explained that he buys all his merchandise, from cold pills to ice cream, on sale at discount stores and police happened to stop him on a routine supply run.


He described the confiscated cash as "my retirement money" and insisted that he is being singled out for prosecution because he is of Middle Eastern descent and has had several disputes with the city over the condition of the 13 rent houses he owns.


"This isn't Houston," he said. "They're after me because I speak out."



Some say restrictions hurt legitimate customers



Oklahoma's new law, which bars convenience stores and discount warehouses from selling pseudoephedrine, was vigorously opposed by over-the-counter drug makers.


"They fought very hard at the Capitol," Woodward said. "They tried hard to water it down."


Elizabeth Assey, a spokeswoman for the Consumer Healthcare Products Association, a drug makers' trade association, said her organization has opposed all restrictions that states have passed that inconvenience lawful consumers.


That includes two-box limits that have been put into law in 10 states, including California, Washington and Missouri.


"We just think (Oklahoma's law) is an overly restrictive way to approach the issue," Assey said. "It will hurt the legitimate customers that rely on these medicines.


"Farm states and rural areas don't have pharmacies open 24 hours a day."



Pharmacy-only sales could save lives, lawmaker says



Texas state Rep. Leo Berman, a Tyler Republican, said he is drafting a bill that mirrors Oklahoma's and he expects to introduce it to the Legislature next year.


"I don't care if the industry objects," he said. "Meth labs have become a major problem, and they're putting lawmen's lives, and the lives of anyone else who lives around them, in danger."


Berman said he would expect pharmacy-only sales of pseudoephedrine to sharply reduce meth production because it is the one ingredient for which there is no substitute.


In Wichita Falls, Chief Deputy Sheriff Cecil Yoder agreed.


"The big guy, the big producer, will find a way around it, but that's not what we have," he said. "We have a lot of small guys cooking the stuff in the countryside or in the back of their pickups. It'll shut them right down."