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Detective Sgt. Jason Grellner, commander of the Franklin County Narcotics Enforcement Unit, asked the council to take this action in order to curb the number of meth labs in the area. Each year, Franklin County ranks among the top five counties for meth labs in Missouri.
Jerry, a pharmacist at Walgreens, feels the new city code is needed, noting that the county has a serious meth problem. He said past attempts to contain the problem have not worked.
Missouri legislators failed to pass a statewide law last session.
"I think it's something that needs to be done and is a good step in the right direction," he said.
A pharmacist from Schroeder Drugs agreed. "With something like this, after the state turned it down, the city took it upon itself to do it," he said, adding that he hopes other cities get behind the measure.
At Washington HealthMart Pharmacy, formerly the Washington Medicine Shoppe, owner Gail Helling has mixed feelings about the new law.
"I understand there's no place but this county that's taking more action to control things, but I'm afraid if no one else in the county adopts similar laws, it will drive customers other places," Helling said.
Unless other communities pass similar ordinances, people can buy pseudoephedrine from other pharmacies in the county, said Miranda Hall, pharmacist at the Washington Wal-Mart.
State law already restricts the amount of cold pills people may buy, but offenders get around that by buying at multiple outlets, a process called "smurfing."
"What we had in practice beforehand just wasn't as effective," Hall said. "We have a logging system at Wal-Mart. Everyone had their own system, and I could log all day long, but it didn't matter. They could go down to Walgreens or Target and buy the maximum allowed at each of those places."
'Concern' for the Customer
At Schroeder's, pharmacists aren't sure yet what this new city ordinance will mean for their customers.
"Allergy season is pretty much over right now, so we haven't really seen the effect of it yet," a Schroeder's pharmacist said. "We have many patients who take pseudoephedrine switched over to prescription mode and we've already contacted their doctors."
At HealthMart, Helling said the new requirement is a "concern" for the usual customer. Many people are not willing to make an appointment with their doctor if they just have a cold, she noted.
"I'm mainly concerned about the inconvenience to the customer," she said. "However, pseudoephedrine won't make or break our business. We'll work through it."
Some pharmacies like Walgreens will contact doctors for patients who need to change their medicine to prescription.
At Wal-Mart, Hall said she was surprised how quickly customers were able to get prescriptions from their doctors for cold medicines that contain pseudoephedrine after the law was passed.
"I honestly thought I would stop selling it for a while. I pulled it off the shelf Tuesday (July 7), and on Thursday (July 9), I had seen a prescription for it," Hall said.
Bob Mueller, director of Schnucks pharmacy, said the corporation will cooperate with any governing bodies that attempt to control the meth problem.
"I didn't feel it was onerous on us to require a prescription," he said.
Other Alternatives
During the July 6 city council meeting, Dr. Andrew Zupan, one of the nation's foremost pediatricians on the effects of methamphetamine on children, called pseudoephedrine a "truly useless drug," that only stops a runny nose for four hours. "Can other medications to the same thing? Absolutely," he told the council.
While some pharmacists contacted by The Missourian agreed with Dr. Zupan, others had a different take.
"We do see that pseudoephedrine does work better than some alternatives, but people who have the occasional cold could use other over-the-counter medicines first," said Jerry, a Walgreens pharmacist.
Mueller said the one symptom that pseudoephedrine cares for that others cannot as effectively is a stuffy nose.
"However, that can be a symptom of another problem, so it's not a bad thing that people contact their doctors," he said.
Hall told The Missourian that pseudoephedrine is not the only drug that works. "You're not going to suffer because you don't have it," she said.
While she said customers at Wal-Mart have told her they find alternatives to pseudoephedrine both better and worse, "everything the textbooks say is that it's just as effective."
One common alternative to pseudoephedrine is phenylephrine, but Helling said she feels phenylephrine does not work as well.
