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That has not happened, according to statistics compiled by the Franklin County Narcotics Enforcement Unit.
In the 90 days prior to July 7 - when Washington's anti-meth ordinance took effect - five pharmacies in the city sold 4,346 boxes of medicine containing pseudoephedrine.
In the 90 days after the law, sales dropped to 310 boxes, an almost 93 percent decrease.
The number of sales at pharmacies in four other area towns - Union, Eureka, Owensville and Sullivan - was 6,392 boxes from April through July. After the law took effect, sales in those stores actually dropped 1.4 percent to 6,308.
Detective Sgt. Jason Grellner, task force commander, said those numbers mean that people from outside the area are no longer coming here to "smurf" pseudoephedrine pills because it's not worth their time.
Smurfing is the practice of buying pills at multiple pharmacies in order to get around state and federal laws that limit the amounts people may legally purchase.
"Now, with Washington and Union pharmacies off limits, it's easier to go smurfing in St. Louis or Jefferson counties where there are multiple outlets," Grellner said.
He said the task force plans to monitor Union's pharmacies 30 days before and after the effective date of the ordinance. Union passed its prescription ordinance Monday, Oct. 12.
"This is phenomenal," Grellner remarked. "It's like a pebble in a lake. The Washington experience is having an effect on smurfing throughout the entire area."
"When you see no sharp increase in the surrounding areas, it's proof that the vast majority of these pills were going to meth labs," Grellner said.
"It's all about the money," Grellner said. "We knew all along that the biggest percentage of pseudoephedrine sold was being smurfed for meth labs but we never had the numbers to prove it. Now we do."
"The people who truly need it are getting it. That shows in the Washington numbers," he said.
"If these numbers hold true for Union as well, the pharmaceutical industry stands to lose close to 90 percent of its profits. Now we know why they are willing to spend over $800,000 for a statewide electronic monitoring system."
The industry has proposed such a system at a time when support is building for a statewide prescription-only law.
Law enforcement groups lobbied for that law in the last legislative session, but it was bottled up in committee and never made it to the House or Senate floors for a vote.
Current state and federal laws limit the amount of pseudoephedrine a person may buy in a 30-day period and they must sign a pharmacy log and show I.D. when they make the purchase.
There was a brief decline in meth labs after those laws took effect, followed by a steady return to the old numbers.
Proponents of an electronic monitoring system claim that will make it easier to track people who are violating the law.
But that has not deterred smurfing in other states which have electronic systems, according to Grellner, because of the high prices being paid for pseudoephedrine on the black market.
"Some people will look at these figures and say that people are buying other over-the-counter medicines without pseudoephedrine," Grellner said. "But we found that not to be true.
"I've talked to all the pharmacists and they noticed the steep decrease in sales and they're happy about it. But they have not noticed a sharp increase in other over-the-counter medicines. They're seeing some, but that's due to the time of the year," Grellner said.
The task force commander noted that prior to 1976, pseudoephedrine was a prescription-only drug. Then, the FDA bowed to pressure from the pharmaceutical industry to make it an over-the-counter medicine despite warnings from the Drug Enforcement Administration about the dangers of methamphetamine.
Initially, people could buy unlimited amounts of pseudoephedrine, Grellner said, and 100-count bottles of the drug were available.
The first victory in the fight against pseudoephedrine was a restriction to require packaging in so-called "blister packs," Grellner said.
It was 1996, 20 years after the prescription requirement was dropped, when the state started seeing an alarming growth of clandestine meth labs that law enforcement began its long fight against methamphetamine, he noted.
The drug task force is pushing for all cities in Franklin County to pass prescription-only laws.
"It works," Grellner exclaimed.
Washington and Union are the first municipalities in the nation to pass the anti-meth ordinances. Jefferson County is considering a similar law.
The state of Oregon is the only state in the nation with a prescription law and it saw a huge decrease in meth labs after the law was adopted.
