The first arrest for a violation of the Combat Meth Act's limits on retail purchases of pseudoephedrine-containing drugs occurred in western New York state, where investigators manually compile a database to track PSE sales in their county.

The Drug Enforcement Administration said the arrest in Wayne County, N.Y., is the first in the nation on charges of exceeding sales limits on nonprescription medicines containing pseudoephedrine, ephedrine or phenylpropanolamine since Combat Meth was enacted in March 2006 (¹ Also see "Pseudoephedrine Will Be Behind The Counter Across The Country By October" - Pink Sheet, 6 March, 2006., p. 5).

Sales limits for the products - 3.6 g daily and 9 g for 30 days - went into effect 30 days after the bill became law, according to the National Association of Chain Drugs Stores.

Other retail provisions of the act - behind-the-counter sales, maintaining sales logs, confirming customers' IDs and training employees for compliance - became effective in September 2006, DEA said.

The agency said 35-year-old William Fousse of Ontario, N.Y., is accused of buying 406 caplets with 25-mg of ephedrine sulfate each at one store in Wayne County and similar amounts at three other stores during a two-week period. "The combined amount ... purchased was over 29 grams, which is three times over what is allowed by law," DEA says in a March 30 release.

Wayne County Sheriff's Department deputies contacted DEA and a federal warrant was issued for Fousse's arrest. Fousse was released after he was arraigned March 30 in the U.S. District Court for Western New York.

Wayne deputies began keeping a database of PSE, ephedrine and PPA drug sales in the county of nearly 100,000 people when Combat Meth was enacted, Chief Deputy Rick House said. Deputies manually compile the database with information from the stores' handwritten PSE sales logs.

"We physically visit each pharmacy," House said. "It isn't a police system in place at the pharmacies."

In the interim final rule DEA published in the Federal Register Sept. 26, 2006, to implement requirements of the act, DEA sought comments on whether technology currently used to capture signatures for credit- or debit-card purchases can be changed to also capture names and addresses (² [A#05140420003], p. 5).

Bartell Drugs has launched a pilot program with SudaScan , a patent-pending software and database program from technology firm Pharmitas, to track purchases of PSE products. Pharmitas said it is talking with other pharmacy and retail chains about adopting SudaScan (³ 'The Tan Sheet,' April 2, 2007, In Brief).

Kevin Nicholson, NACDS vice president for pharmacy and regulatory affairs, said because law enforcement officers need time to review sales data from stores' logs, some time was going to pass after the sales limits became effective before any arrests were made on violations.

That is what happened in Wayne County, where meth abuse had been increasing, House said. "We haven't had the abuse in this area as some other jurisdictions have had, but it's been moving into our area," he said.

"Basically there was no way to determine it prior, so we're looking at it from the time of the statute out."

House said Fousse's PSE purchases came to investigators' attention from information entered in the database, not through tips from pharmacy employees.

He said all stores selling the products in the county are complying with the act. "We haven't run across any stores that have been unwilling to cooperate with us."

However, investigators realize there is no guarantee all retail employees will be vigilant about compliance. "The best thing to say is the system so far appears to be working," House said.

Nicholson said while the act requires retailers to maintain sales logs, it does not require employees at the stores to enforce the sales limits or to report customers who exceed the limits to authorities.

However, he said while "the federal act did not intend" for retailers to enforcement it, NACDS considers it likely chain store employees will be aware when customers exceed purchase limits and may pass that information on to law enforcement officers.

House said consumers who are intent on exceeding the purchase limits will not stop searching for ways around the law. "I'm sure that we will be seeing other methods coming down the pike as far as people trying to purchase larger quantities of these drugs," he said.

- Malcolm Spicer (m.spicer@elsevier.com)

First Arrest Under Combat Meth Act Generated By Local Database In NY

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