Australia: Pharmacists help crack down on drug production

The Pharmacy Guild of Australia has launched a campaign to stop criminal groups using cold and flu tablets to produce illegal drugs.

Police say up to 90 per cent of methylamphetamine, or "speed", manufactured in Australia comes from pseudoephedrine tablets sold in pharmacies.

Under the guild's plan, cold and flu medications will be kept behind the counter and customers would be limited to buying only one packet at a time.

The guild's president, John Bronger, says the plan makes it difficult for criminals to access large amounts of pseudoephedrine.

"Criminal gangs have been known to engage in "speed runs" up and down the east coast and other areas, targeting pharmacies and accumulating a large number of packets," Mr Bronger said.

"This is the type of behaviour that we want to help police stop."

Detective Inspector Paul Willingham of the New South Wales Drug Squad says the scheme will prevent criminal groups from manufacturing speed.

"Unfortunately pseudoephedrine has been targeted very, very heavily by criminal syndicates for a number of years now," he said.

"Over the past couple of years this trend is increasing and it seems to be growing at an alarming rate."

Newshawk: http://www.napnt.org/amphetablog.html
Pubdate: Mon, 07 Mar 2005
Source: Australian Broadcasting Corporation (Australia
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Copyright: 2005 Australian Broadcasting Corporation
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