Methamphetamine production prompts lawmakers to limit access to Sudafed

• With meth, drug users in middle America no longer have to rely on shady transactions with dangerous dealers.
• They merely have to go to the local drugstore and pick up a pack of cold medicine, and some other household items.
• But a bi-partisan group of U.S. Senators is trying to change that.
• The Methamphetamine problem in the U.S. is growing in mathematical proportions...in part because many over-the-counter cold medicines contain pseudoephedrine, the main ingredient in home cooked meth.
• The drug hit the streets over a decade ago, made in super-labs in California.
• Since then it has spread aggressively into the heartland, filling every dark corner.
• Authorities have found meth labs in homes, hotels, barns, cars, a judge's chambers and even inside a church.
• Toxic by-product of meth production is just one of many problems created by the drug.
• The bill proposes putting common cold remedies containing pseudoephedrine behind the pharmacist's counter.
• Similar legislation passed in Oklahoma last year has reduced the number of lab seizures by 80 percent.
• The Federal measure would also provide more training and money to law enforcement.
• Officers are not the only public servants being stretched thin.
• Social service workers are dealing with a number of so-called "meth orphans" - children who are getting caught up in the drug epidemic.
• About half the kids taken out of home with meth labs are testing positive for meth themselves.
• Limiting the sale of over-the-counter cold remedies in the U.S. would be a big step, but supplies smuggled in from Canada and Mexico will likely make meth a permanent battlefield in the war on drugs.