WHAT WILL TRACKING PRECURSOR SALES DO FOR MY COMMUNITY?

WHAT WILL TRACKING PRECURSOR SALES DO FOR MY COMMUNITY?

P&S Consulting Company based in Terre Haute Indiana. P&S is the first company in the USA to track mass ephedrine/cold-medicine buyers (smurfers) using an on-line, multi-state centralized database for law enforcement. The Vigo County Sheriffs Department of Indiana used the P&S online ephedrine sales database from January 2005 – July 2007.

P&S Consulting tracked over 50,000 monthly ephedrine transactions from 250 stores nation-wide. P&S tracked 40 of the 92 counties in Indiana. Additionally, P&S worked closely with the Indianapolis DEA office and Indiana Drug Task Force groups to track down smurfers.

P&S consulting was asked many questions by citizens and city & county leaders when it came to tracking the sales of pseudoephedrine products, most people wanted to know the following;

What is pseudoephedrine sales tracking?

Will Tracking help my community?

Is money spent on tracking a waste?   

Does tracking put people in Jail?

Why does law enforcement need tracking?

Will tracking decrease the number of meth labs?

Will there be a rise in Mexican meth once pseudoephedrine sales tracking is in place?

And finally, Is “Big Brother” watching me? I hope the following can answer your questions and dispel some poor information floating around out there. The following answers to questions about tracking are exact and to the point as possible.

What is pseudoephedrine sales tracking?

Tracking does not directly uncover meth labs. Tracking looks for smurfers. Smurfers are people addicted to meth that go store to store, usually 10 or more stores in one day, purchasing one or two boxes of cold-medicine per store and then repeating that process three or four days later. Smurfers are prostituted out by meth cooks to get ephedrine based products to make meth. Once the meth cook gets their ephedrine, they pay the smurfer in cash or meth, more likely meth. Tracking also looks for frequent buyers, people who purchase 80 grams of product or more per month. P&S Consulting is experienced in tracking, and after collecting a years worth of sales data in Vigo County Indiana, we found few people purchasing 5 or more boxes of cold-medicine product in single transaction. The smurfers aren’t that brave or stupid (yet). Also, since all ephedrine based cold-medicine is a listed product with the DEA, merchants need to register for a “retail sales license” to order the product by the caseload - legally. Conversely, much like setting a speed trap on the highway, the police are not interested in the person doing 74mph in a 70 mph zone – they want the speeder doing 85mph. To that end, not one Sheriff that used P&S tracking service gave a rat’s behind about someone who buys a box or two of ephedrine a week or if someone goes 0.5 over the gram limit inside the allowable time period. Why, because there are too many people buying 30 to 50 grams of cold medicine product per week that need the attention of law enforcement.

Will Tracking help my community?

Yes and no, it is important to note, rarely do meth cooks buy cold-medicine product. So, the best use of tracking is to group high volume cold-medicine buyers together and link them to cooks manufacturing high volume batches of dope. Even with the best tracking in place, it will not stop people from manufacturing meth locally. WHY; Two reasons; most cooks operate in a cell structure much like Al-qada. When one member drops out another can get recruited. Secondly, the “one pot meth method” is extremely popular right now(2006). One pot method requires fewer products and is tailored to produce enough dope for two to three people in a day. To that end, tracking will help connect the smurfer to the meth cook, but only with the help of good  law enforcement detectives. Paper and electronic tracking provides about 75 percent of the picture of what’s going on in a community, the other 25 percent of the picture is the hard work detectives put in on searching for smurfers. NOTE: Just having people sign their name to a piece of paper stating they purchased cold-medicine only goes so far. Only coordinated use of information and tracking will help Police and Sheriff Departments. To that end, most law enforcement Departments don’t have a spare 3 to 5 people sitting around to enter in 15,000-30,000 names into a database so they can see who just bought tons of ephedrine products this month. Furthermore, tracking won’t help Police and Sheriff Departments if they don’t use a shared database to coordinated arrests. In fact, tracking will be a big waste of money, if police don’t utilize a multi-county or muti-state centralized database. Tracking will never become fully realized until three or more adjoining counties come together and share store sales data, jail book-in data and police call for service data. Additionally, tracking will only marginally help the lone community or county establishing tracking by itself. Bottom line, coordinated tracking will help provide names to law enforcement, and with some effort, the hope is to get the new meth user before they become severely addicted. The truth be told, Tracking won’t stop the hard core addict from buying cold-medicine. Unfortunately, meth is so addictive, the hard core users can’t stop buying pills for their cook.  The ONLY way to get meth heads help is to arrest them before they die.

Is money spent on tracking a waste?

First, most law enforcement departments have no extra tax payer money to investigate meth lab calls, no extra money for officer over-time on late night meth busts, no extra buy-money to purchase meth in sting operations, no extra money to clean-up seized meth labs and especially no extra money set aside for ephedrine sales tracking. I don’t know of one law enforcement department nationwide that has an abundance of money. Therefore, if money can be found for tracking it’s worth the time of starting a program. However, if the program is not set up properly, then it is a money pit and a drain on law enforcement time and money. Most County Sheriffs that use tracking pay for it out of fines collected from cold medicine purchase violations/citations. Therefore, much like a parking ticket, law enforcement pays for tracking out other peoples violations. Additionally, some counties have the County Prosecutor Office use their seized assets fund to pay for tracking. Again, not tax payer money, but recovered drug money.

 Does tracking put people in Jail?

There are three issues here; First, County or City ordinance citations for cold-medicine purchase violations, Second, State Laws and Third, Federal Law. People who violate the PSE County or City ordinance  don’t go to jail, they get fined. However, should these people not pay the fine or not show up for their court appearence, a warrant will be issued and then may go to jail. Again the purpose of tracking is to catch the big fish (Meth Cooks) – release the small ones (Smurfers). Secondly, If police are enforcing state laws, then mass pill buying is normally a C-Misdemeanor, which means the county prosecutor must prosecute smurfers for the state, and incur the cost and time of prosecuting these people. So to that end, many smurfers that get caught, plead out guilty or plea bargain for a lesser sentence. Therefore, jail space may be an issue. Lastly, if no local ordinance or state law is in effect and your area falls under the “Combat Meth Act” then it is a federal issue. Therefore, arrested and convicted pill-buyers will be spending time in a federal prison and not taking up space in the local jail. It is always best to let the local Sheriff’s maintain and use tracking, in that way, few people end up going to jail.  Sheriffs don’t want to waste time and money putting a 100 smurfers behind bars each month – they want COOKS!

Why does law enforcement need tracking?

“[A hidden-camera investigation by the Evansville Courier & Press and WEHT-News25 found the new law is easily circumvented. Over three days in October, a volunteer repeatedly visited pharmacies in Evansville and was able to purchase 19 boxes of pseudoephedrine, which amounts to 528 pills of 30 mg Sudafed. That would be enough to make the equivalent of more than two batches of meth]”. After one year of tracking cold-medicine sales in Vigo County (January 1, to December 31, 2005), “meth-heads” still buy a heck of a lot of cold-medicine product, they even sign their real names and print legibly. In June, 2005, over 52 percent of the cold-medicine product sold in Vigo County went into the hands of people who violated the state precursor law. However, the number of new precursor law violators making ephedrine transactions in Vigo County have decreased from 71.9 percent (Mar 05) to 19.3 percent (Dec 05). This means that the majority of suspect ephedrine transactions are completed by repeat precursor law violators. Monthly re-offenders of the ephedrine ordinance are more easily tracked down than one time violators. It was originally thought that once a person was cited for the precursor law – they would come to the realization that their name appeared on a tracking database, hence, this would be the end of their buying days, it was not so. To the amazement of law enforcement, it is the re-offenders that keep purchasing cold-medicine. This meth addiction is so powerful that a person will still buy mass amounts of cold-medicine product in a county that tracks every single sale made by every single county store. “...addiction to methamphetamine causes paranoia. If a meth person has to go through the hoops of presenting ID and all of that, they're not going to bother." - Rep. Trent Van Haaften, D-Mount Vernon, IN. -MYTH

Will tracking decrease the number of meth labs?

Using the State of Indiana as an example; the number of clandestine meth labs seized in Indiana is reported as an aggregate number, therefore, labs will look as if they are decreasing. Labs decreased in some counties, but not in all counties. In some counties there was a dramatic increase in labs while neighboring counties had a major decrease in labs, giving support to the theory; crime never goes away, it just moves somewhere else. Lets face facts, the two reasons labs will be down are; First, what some counties call labs others call abandoned trash bags on the side of the road with empty Sudafed boxes and 2 litter soda bottles inside. Sure, it’s obvious these are the remains of some meth-heads experiment, but a lab? Bottom line, what is called a lab one-day can be called trash the next; there is no criterion when classifying labs. Secondly, If County (A) lost 100 labs in a year and adjoining Counties (B) and (C) each find 50 new labs, I don’t call this reducing labs, I call it one hell of an effective Sheriff. I do see a problem with this, and it goes like this...next year, County Sheriff’s (B) and (C) become better at convincing their county meth-heads to take up lab production in some other county. - The number of clandestine meth labs seized in Vigo County, Indiana is down since inception of the County Tracking Ordinance (166 labs, 2004 to 82 labs, 2005). The number of State precursor law violators in Vigo County for April 2005 was (107) - violators for January 2006 (151)

Will there be a rise in Mexican Meth?

This is a rumor and myth. First, ephedrine is not grown on trees or picked from a plant. Most Ephedrine is refined in India. India exports ephedrine everywhere, including large quantities to Mexico. Meth has been coming from Mexico and via west coast motorcycle gangs for years, and at a steady pace. At no point in history did law enforcement start tracking and measuring the amount of people addicted to Mexican meth compared to home made meth? The problem with the rumor starts when media and some State law enforcement agency’s cite statistics showing the number of meth labs are decreasing and meth addicts are no longer getting home-made meth. In reality, they are. People seem to connect the wrong dots. The quantity of labs found or not found has no effect on what type of meth (west coast or local) people bought.

Is Big Brother watching me?

Using Indiana as an example; All the information gained from tracking: name, address and operator’s license number is public information not CIA intelligence. Just about everyone’s name and address is published in one of the many million phone books – not to mention the many online search engines like “Google” along with your phone listing. If you really want to get personal with someone’s OLN, in Indiana, you can always pay $50.00 to Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles and have complete on-line World Wide Web access to anyone’s OLN numbers, for a whole year! If tracking is working correctly, law enforcement should have a generated list of violators each week or month. Therefore, if you do not want to make law enforcements monthly top 20 list of people buying mass quantities of ephedrine product, don’t go out and buy 60 to 100 grams a week. Again, as stated previously, Police and Sheriff Departments want mass ephedrine buyers...they are not looking for the dreaded two boxes per month Sudafed buyer– I think you’re in the clear.