INDIANAPOLIS – Delaware County Prosecutor Jeffrey Arnold on Tuesday urged Indiana legislators to make the two over-the-counter medications most commonly used in meth production controlled substances.
“We can’t stop meth, but we can stop meth production,” Arnold told the Indiana Senate’s corrections and criminal law committee, considering a proposal to require prescriptions for pseudoephedrine and ephedrine.
Arnold, representing the Indiana Prosecuting Attorneys Council, told the panel that after lawmakers in Oregon and Mississippi put those medications behind the counter, meth production in those states “dropped to almost nothing.”
“The ease of meth production brings new faces into our jails every day,” Arnold said, noting that Delaware County — in part due to the efforts of a four-trooper Indiana State Police meth suppression unit —led the state with “148 clandestine lab busts last year.”
“Taxpayers’ costs are soaring,” the prosecutor said. “I’ve seen too many children in too many meth houses that are taken out with permanent lung damage. ... You have the ability to stop that.”
Arnold described the far-reaching financial impact of meth labs, noting in part the costs of law enforcement, long-term care of children removed from households where labs existed, and the eventual abandonment of many of those properties.
Interviewed after his testimony, Arnold said he was far less concerned about individual meth abusers than than with the production of meth in Hoosier homes.