A new initiative launched by Oklahoma’s narcotic watchdogs to stop illicit use of the key ingredient in making methamphetamine is already having an effect.

Since Nov. 1, a birth date is required to purchase pseudoephedrine at pharmacies. And out-of-state drivers’ licenses or identification cards no longer will be accepted.

The birth date requirement will help eliminate sales to individuals using fake or multiple identification cards to purchase more of the methamphetamine ingredient than state law allows, said Mark Woodward, spokesman for the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs.

“It already has,” Muskogee Drug Warehouse Pharmacy Manager Brian Jones said Friday.

“We’ve already had two or three (rejections) this week.”

The latest initiative has the OBNDD working with the Department of Public Safety to implement the data-sharing program that allows the pseudoephedrine tracking program to reject sales from customers using identification cards not currently in the state system, Woodward said.

Epperson said before a purchase of pseudoephedrine is complete, information is plugged into the system to make sure the purchaser hasn’t already exhausted his legal monthly supply.

All of the state’s law enforcement community is plugged into the new system, Woodward said.

The system limits the purchase to nine grams of pseudoephedrine per card per person in 30 days.

Dan Epperson, a pharmacist at Drug Warehouse on West Okmulgee Avenue, said if a person purchases one box of Claritin-D that contains 15 pills — that’s 3.6 grams of pseudoephedrine.

That person could purchase one more such box that month and then would have to go to a cold medicine that contained 2.8 grams or less of pseudoephedrine for a month’s limit.

Because all products containing pseudoephedrine must be kept behind the counter in the pharmacy department, people who want to purchase it must ask the pharmacist for it and sign for it, Epperson said.

It’s not uncommon for several people to come in together at one time to buy the product, he said.

A lot of stores in Muskogee are cooperating and tipping off law enforcement to repeat pseudoephedrine buyers, said Muskogee County Sheriff’s Deputy Mike Morrison.

Sometimes as many as six or seven people will show up in one car and buy Actifed, Sudafed or a similar brand of product containing pseudoephedrine, he said.

Morrison, head of Pearson’s new drug task force, said people buying the products to make meth get enough to use and sell enough to make more,

“A lot of these people are just users,” Morrison said.

“This law (on limiting pseudoephedrine purchases) stopped big labs.”

In 2006, Oklahoma was the first state to begin tracking pseudoephedrine sales electronically in real time, according to the OBNDD. Meth production dropped dramatically.

But some areas of the state, including Muskogee County, have been seeing increases in so-called “shake-and-bake” or “one-pot” meth labs that use smaller quantities of pseudoephedrine, Woodward said.

Shake and bake labs were a big topic at a recent District Attorney’s Council meeting, said Muskogee County District Attorney Larry Moore.

“Where there’s a will — there’s a way,” Moore said. “We have a policy that if you are cooking or dealing in Muskogee County — you’re going to spend some time in jail, depending on the nature of the operation.”

Moore said there’s more apt to be fires in some of the shake-and-bake labs and more danger to families that are living in the area.

Muskogee police have found three or four shake-and-bake meth labs a month for about the last six months, said Lt. Andy Simmons, head of the Special Investigation Unit.

Simmons said if police don’t find actual working labs, neighbors or citizens tip them to dump sites.

“We’re finding remnants of shake and bake labs in ditches or abandoned property,” he said. “It’s a mess.”

Within the last eight months to a year, meth labs have gone through the roof in the county “like it was in the old days,” said Muskogee County Sheriff Charles Pearson.

“We’ve busted 13 drug labs in the last 30 days,” Pearson said.

“They are one-pot labs for the most part,” he said.

“But, they are very small labs compared to what we were used to.”

Morrison said recent meth lab busts in the area have been more like cleaning up lab trash and not a lot of drugs.

Just one of the 13 labs taken down by the Muskogee County Sheriff’s Department in 30 days has been a big lab, Morrison said.

From the 13 recent lab busts, a total of about $100,000 in cash was seized, Morrison said.



Reach Donna Hales at 684-2923 or dhales@muskogeephoenix.com.