TERRE HAUTE —
Some Indiana retailers are objecting to their portrayal as greedy by Vigo County Sheriff Jon Marvel, who is encouraging a prescription-only sales policy for pseudoephedrine products in the battle to stop illegal methamphetamine production in the Wabash Valley.
“The sheriff implying it is greed and not focused on patient care, it is wrong,” said John Elliott, public affairs manager of Kroger.
Elliott and Grant Monihan of the Indiana Retail Council said Friday that electronic tracking of pseudoephedrine sales would be a more effective tool for law enforcement, while still allowing legitimate consumers of the product to buy the non-prescription medicine they choose.
“We appreciate the concerns expressed by law enforcement,” Monihan told the Tribune-Star on Friday, “but to suggest you make it by prescription only is more complicated than they realize.”
On Thursday, Sheriff Jon Marvel joined with Terre Haute Police to commend eight area pharmacies who will no longer sell pseudoephedrine products to anyone without a prescription. And Marvel said that “corporate greed” among national retail chains is the underlying financial reason for retailers not joining the effort.
Marvel and THPD Sgt. Chris Gallagher invited area pharmacy representatives to a gathering in May to ask them to go to a prescription-only sales policy for pseudoephedrine products such as Sudafed, because PSE is the one requirement of any recipe to cook a batch of methampetamine.
In a June 18 letter from the Indiana Retail Council in response to that May request, Monihan said the chain pharmacies in Vigo County declined to participate in the prescription policy for three reasons. “Chain pharmacies currently have robust procedures in place to deter illegal PSE purchase and use. Indiana law and regulations do not regulate PSE as a prescription product or a controlled substance. Participation in a prescription program that is limited to one county is likely to cause customer confusion and will result in increased health care costs.”
Monihan pointed out that pharmacies follow state and federal laws regarding PSE sales, just as they do for other products and controlled substances.
Elliott agreed that Kroger has already gone to its only electronic database for collecting required sales data from customers buying PSE products, moving beyond the on-paper tracking system that took up a lot of pharmacist time. Kroger went to the new database in anticipation of a statewide electronic tracking system being set up by law enforcement. A 2010 Indiana Senate bill to establish that e-tracking system did not pass in the House of Representatives, however.
The Indiana State Police also received funding to set up a statewide pseudoephedrine sales tracking system about three years ago, Elliott said, but so far that has not happened.
“We as retailers implemented our part,” Elliott said, “but the database was never implemented by law enforcement.”
Elliott said Kroger has seen a steady downward trend of total sales on PSE products in recent years. Last year, there was a 3 percent decline in PSE sales in the Indiana-Illinois region. He did not speculate on the cause for the drop in sales, but did say that some Kroger customers have complained about the current tracking of PSE sales.
Monihan said tracking the sales electronically in real time, as the purchases are made, is the best solution to stop over-the-limit purchases of PSE products by people “smurfing” as a group to buy enough PSE to make a batch of meth.
If that e-tracking system had been in place last year, he pointed out, a Parke County woman arrested for exceeding the state’s purchase limit “wouldn’t have been run through the ringer as she was.” That woman, a state prison employee, had purchased cold medicine with PSE for ill family members at two pharmacies within a one-week period, putting her on the police radar as a possible meth cooker. She was later arrested, and her case received national media attention.
Elliott said he believes Marvel’s comments are an insult to Kroger pharmacists and the company.
“We are very disappointed by the sheriff’s statements, and consider his characterization outrageous,” Elliott said, “and believe he owes the pharmacists of Kroger in Terre Haute an apology.”
Marvel said he stood by his Thursday comments as related to a corporate decision.
“My comments were not aimed at the pharmacists, the people who deal with this issue on the front lines,” Marvel said. “It is aimed at the people upstairs in the corporate office, the fat cats who are making money on this.”
Among the retailers also mentioned by Marvel and Sgt. Gallagher during Thursday’s meeting were Walmart, CVS and Kmart. While local Walmart pharmacists at the two Terre Haute stores made the decision on their own to require a prescription for products containing PSE, Gallagher said they were later instructed by their corporate offices not to require prescriptions.
Walmart did issue a statement about its PSE product policy.
“Since February of 1997, Walmart has been one of the leading retailers in supporting efforts to curb the problem of methamphetamine. Walmart was one of the first retailers to limit access to products containing ephedrine and/or pseudoephedrine,” said Christi Davis Gallagher, Walmart’s senior manager for public relations and brand reputation. “Because ephedrine- and pseudoephedrine-containing products serve a legitimate medical purpose, however, we will continue to make them available to customers who request them from our pharmacists. A prescription will be required only in those circumstances where sale without a prescription is prohibited by law. As Indiana law does not require a prescription for over-the-counter ephedrine or pseudoephedrine-containing products, we do not require that customers obtain one to purchase those products.”
Lisa Trigg can be reached at (812) 231-4254 or lisa.trigg@tribstar.com.
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