INDIANAPOLIS— Proposals to make a key methamphetamine ingredient a prescription drug have gone nowhere this General Assembly session, despite lawmakers filing four bills.
Supporters are dealing with a perception that meth is not a statewide issue, but limited to certain regions, as they argue that prescriptions for ephedrine and pseudoephedrine are needed to control the substance.
State Rep. Wendy McNamara, R-Mount Vernon, is pushing a proposal dealing with meth, but instead of prescriptions, it requires real estate disclosure statements contain information about former meth labs.
McNamara, who is vice chair of the House’s Courts and Criminal Code Committee, said she has continually supported legislation to require prescriptions.
“It’s going to be an issue that unfortunately there are so many pockets of it, but where the pockets are it’s extremely prevalent, but where it’s not people don’t see it as an immediate issue,” McNamara said. “They don’t see it as we need to address this now because it’s not there.”
Republican state Rep. Ben Smaltz, R-Auburn, authored a measure to require prescriptions this session, but it failed to get a hearing in the House.
A main argument Smaltz heard is that requiring prescriptions for pseudoephedrine common in over-the-counter cold and allergy medicines would be expensive and inconvenient for Hoosiers who obey the law.
Smaltz said he’s found no studies to support that argument and plans to introduce an improved proposal in 2015. Smaltz said he plans to track data from Mississippi and Missouri. Mississippi requires prescriptions for pseudoephedrine, while a number of cities in Missouri have done so on a local level.
Smaltz said he expects data to show regulating access to pseudoephedrine decreases the number of hospital admissions, arrests and children needing services because of the manufacturing of meth.
“When you have an issue like this that is as important as it is for specific regions of our state, but really not everywhere in our state, it’s important to put your toe in the water,” Smaltz said.
Evansville Mayor Lloyd Winnecke, who supports efforts to require prescriptions for pseudoephedrine, said law enforcement officials have told him it’s essential in their ongoing efforts to decrease meth labs. Winnecke said meth is still a growing problem in the state and that the number of meth labs in the city remained essentially unchanged from 2012 to 2013.
“What is disappointing is we get a little bit of traction in the Legislature and then it kind of falls off the radar,” Winnecke said.
McNamara’s proposal on requiring real estate disclosures of meth labs has already passed the House and will be heard by a Senate committee on Monday.
Her proposal also will transfer the creation of a database to track houses where meth has been manufactured from the Indiana Criminal Justice Institute to the Indiana State Police. Under the proposal, homes certified by the state as decontaminated will be removed from the database. The database also will include links to the Indiana Department of Environmental Management where decontamination certificates can be viewed or direct users to call the Indiana State Police.
“Primarily because when you talk about economic development you don’t want to attach a stigma to a house forever that has actually been decontaminated,” McNamara said. “But the concern is you still want people to have the knowledge that maybe at some point it happened. That’s where the disclosure comes in.”