COMMENTARY: What's the right Rx for controlling meth?

It debilitates the user.

It destroys families and relationships.

It debases lives of children, who sometimes are sold for sex to fund an adult’s lust for the drug.

It ruins homes, apartments and hotel rooms by imbedding carpets, drapes, bed clothes, wall coverings — costing thousands to reclaim or exposing future dwellers, tenants and guests, unknowingly, to a meth-infested environment.

Meth’s discarded ingredients litter roadways and contaminate ground water, which is not good for living things.

Pseudoephedrine (PSE), used for decades to treat colds and allergies, is an essential ingredient in making meth. In Indiana, pseudoephedrine’s sale is now allowed over the counter, but it is tracked electronically at the point of sale and limited in quantity and frequency.

But is that system working well enough, given that Indiana earned the dubious distinction of having the most clandestine meth lab incidents in the nation in 2013 and is likely to be No. 1 (or should that be No. 50?) in meth labs again for 2014?

That continuing increase in labs comes despite what would appear to be increased enforcement by police, prosecutors and the courts. Supply and demand keep trumping enforcement.

So what’s next?

Should PSE now become available only by prescription?

Should the convenience of over-the-counter pseudoephedrine be sacrificed by its users for a prescription-only policy to see if that works to better control meth? Control, of course, is the wrong word, because meth is way, way out of control.

In a five-part series starting today on this page and concluding next Sunday, the Tribune-Star will offer the pros and cons of the issue through the experiences and opinions of Indiana citizens who have perspectives that inform the issue — a sheriff-turned-county-commissioner, doctors, police officers, a legislator.

No matter their view on “to Rx or not to Rx,” all agree that more has to be done to battle meth.

For one former sheriff, 'The answer is so simple'

For 29 of his 35 years in law enforcement, Jon Marvel wore the badge of the Vigo County Sheriff’s Department and over that time encountered nearly every kind of crime imaginable, some unthinkable in terms of harm to individuals and to his community.

Even early in his VCSD career, which began in 1975, he was acutely aware of illegal drugs such as cocaine, heroin and marijuana because of his role on a city-county-state task force that worked undercover narcotics. So, he knew a bit about drugs.

But in May 1999, while he was chief deputy, he encountered methamphetamine for the first time after a home lab seizure in Prairie Creek. “In fact, I had to be told what it (meth) was,” Marvel said late last year as he recalled that experience. “It was really an education for me to see how much these people had to get involved with [meth] … stealing batteries and anhydrous ammonia from the fields, and all of the ingredients to make this drug. I just couldn’t understand what the attraction was.”

That attraction became clear when an arrestee told Marvel: “Sheriff, this [meth] was unlike anything I’ve ever had. … He says, ‘I’ve used cocaine, marijuana, heroin and nothing gets the high like methamphetamine. It’s just such a great drug. We’ll do anything in the world we can to do that drug again.’”

That illuminating moment 16 years ago would inform much of the rest of Marvel’s law enforcement career, which ended in 2010 when he had finished serving the second of his two consecutive terms as Vigo County’s sheriff.

Soon after, in the early 2000s, as the search for a meth high had already destroyed thousands of lives, Vigo County would come to lead — pardon the term — the state in the number of meth lab busts. Other counties in western Indiana would similarly be afflicted: Sullivan, Knox, Vanderburgh.

No other regions in the state had the meth issue at that time, Marvel said. Why this region? One theory was the ease of highway traffic on Interstate 70 and U.S. 41 as a means to move large quantities of drugs. Another factor: Significant access to anhydrous ammonia, a common meth ingredient, among the region’s farmers.

On one trip to the state legislature to ask for help and to alert the rest of the state that the problem was becoming more widespread than just western Indiana, Marvel recalled, a legislator from eastern Indiana told him. “Sheriff, we don’t have that problem here. That’s your problem over there.”

(Indiana State Police numbers for 2013 now support Marvel’s contention that meth is a more widespread problem. Except for Vanderburgh County, all of the other counties in the “top 10” meth lab seizures are east of Vigo County.)

Still, because of Vigo’s dubious, unsought distinction as No. 1 in meth labs in Indiana, other law enforcement “looked at Vigo County as knowing what we were talking about,” said Marvel, who became one of three Vigo County commissioners on Jan. 1.

Seeing no help from the state back then, Marvel said he, the county commissioners, the county attorney, local pharmacists and business leaders came up with a county ordinance that put pseudoephedrine behind the counter and that required buyers to show identification and sign a register. Vigo was the first Indiana county to pass such an ordinance. A few months later, the state adopted a similar law, Marvel said.

How has that county ordinance worked?

Marvel: “I guess I could just say, ‘Look at the numbers.’ We’re not leading the state anymore.”

In the years since then, Vigo’s place on the meth lab seizure list has fallen (a good thing), but Indiana is still a hotbed of meth busts — as are neighboring states such as Ohio, Michigan, Tennessee, Illinois and Missouri. For 2013, Indiana was No. 1 in meth lab seizures: 1,808, according to Indiana State Police statistics that ISP and other police agencies reported; 1,551 arrests resulted from those seizures.

In 2012, a state law went into effect that tracked pseudoephedrine sales electronically and also set limits for quantities and frequencies of purchase. While this law has been in effect, the numbers of meth lab seizures and arrests have continued at a high level, causing some to question the effectiveness of that tracking law.

Now, as this year’s Indiana General Assembly takes shape, what new steps should Indiana take?

“It’s just so … “ Marvel pauses to find the next word, “disheartening … when the answer to that question is ‘Make it a prescription drug,’” — the “it” referring to pseudoephedrine, which is the only constant ingredient in all meth recipes.

“But, the answer is so simple,” Marvel said. He hasn’t seen any statistics about the effects of the state’s PSE tracking law, so for him, that simple answer is to return pseudoephedrine to its former status as a prescription-only drug.

A new reason that position makes sense, he says, is that drug manufacturers have recently produced pseudoephedrine-free drug formulas that offer relief from colds, sinus issues and congestion. And those drugs are available over the counter, as pseudoephedrine is now. And the meth cooks have not — yet at least — found a way to break down those new formulas to make meth, he said.

Still, there are costs to the consumer: More doctors’ visits and more insurance co-pays to name two.

Marvel doesn’t like those costs, but says: “Look at the prisons and look at the jails. We’re going to have to look at the jail overcrowding issue again here in our own county, and it’s directly related to the drug issue and methamphetamine.”

When he considers the crimes that grow out of the quest for meth, Marvel says, “That cost surely has to be more, a larger amount than a visit to the doctor would be.”