Hesston pharmacy in pilot program to curb meth

The Hesston Pharmacy is part of a new pilot program aimed at decreasing meth manufacture in the state.

About 128 pharmacies in 62 counties will participate in the 12-month pilot program, dubbed MethShield. The program will allow the pharmacies to immediately report sales of medications that can be used to make meth.

Hesston is the first pharmacy in Harvey County to implement the program, which went online there Thursday.

Gina Edwards, Hesston pharmacist, said it takes a little bit of extra time to scan IDs when customers purchase medicines containing pseudoephedrine, but she said she has had few complaints from customers.

Edwards said she hopes the program will help curb the illegal use of pseudoephedrine.

Although the program has not come to the Newton Dillons pharmacies, North Dillons pharmacy manager Sandra Pope said she is excited about the project.

“I think it is a really great program,” she said. “I am excited about it, and I think it definitely will help curb crooks until the crooks find a way around it.”

Pope said she thinks the illegal drug trade eventually will force the medication to be under prescription.

The Matt Samuels law limited the number of medications containing the drug people can purchase per month and placed the drugs behind the counter.

Under that law, customers have to show ID and sign a log every time they purchase the drugs.

However, officials believe criminals are circumventing the law by going to multiple pharmacies. MethShield is aimed at curbing that.

Currently, the Hesston pharmacy is only linked to the KBI and can flag transactions as questionable. Eventually, the program hopes to have all pharmacies linked via the Web.

“We don’t even know if they went across the street or on down the road” to buy more pseudoephedrine, said Mike Dandurand, owner of Dandurand’s Piccadilly Pharmacy in Wichita where the program was officially launched last week. “That’s going to change.”

If a customer has bought medication containing pseudoephedrine at one pharmacy and then tries to buy more elsewhere, MethShield will alert the second pharmacy.

“Meth continues to just be a terrible problem for Kansas,” said Jeff Brandau, a special agent in charge for the Kansas Bureau of Investigation. “We are just inundated.”

The agency found 97 meth labs through July, matching the total for all of 2007. The figure is still below numbers of just a few years ago, but authorities say it marks a troubling turnaround.

“It’s a progression of people learning how to bypass the safeguards we have put in place” through laws limiting how much pseudoephedrine can be bought within a day or a month, Brandau said.

Sheriff A.J. Wuthnow said he was eager to learn more about the project and its ability to curb meth manufacture.

“It sounds like a real cool project,” he said.

MethShield is the domestic version of a nationwide electronic log system first developed in Australia.

Meth lab numbers in the Australian state of Queensland — roughly twice the size of Texas, with a population of 4.2 million — fell 37 percent in the first year the electronic system was used there, said Shaun Singleton, the company’s chief executive officer.

Singleton said he came to the Midwest to demonstrate the system’s value because the meth problem in the Midwest mirrored what was happening in Queensland. The company is paying for the installation and operation of the pilot program.

If the state wants to continue using the program after the pilot test, it will need to find funding for it, Brandau said.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.