I-Team 8: Meth or Medicine

The number of methamphetamine labs discovered by police will top an all time high this year, despite a law designed to nab the people who make the drug.

That law put an innocent grandmother behind bars for buying too much cold medicine.

The arrest of Sally Harpold made us wonder if the law that keeps cold medicine behind the counter is doing any good.

Sally went to buy cold medicine for her family, but broke a 2005 law designed to limit the amount of pseudoephedrine a person can buy.

The law requires you to show identification and sign a log before purchasing a small amount of cold medicine. Police can and do look at that log. The intent of the law was to keep crooks from making methamphetamine.

But Sally had never heard of the law.

When asked if she was a meth cook, Sally replied, “Oh absolutely not, you might find me cooking in my kitchen, but it'd be brownies, cakes, cookies.”

Harpold was caught up in a dragnet of people who had shown a pattern of buying pills in different counties to try and avoid detection.

I-Team 8’s Rick Dawson went to Nina Alexander, the Vermillion County Prosecutor who charged Harpold. He asked if the arrest shows that background checks are needed before a warrant is issued with the cold medicine law.

“I don't think it does,” Alexander answered. “And that's because logistically, I don't think that's possible.”

Rather than plead guilty, Harpold entered a diversion program meaning the charges will go away if she stays out of trouble for a year.

But her case has one lawmaker considering tweaking the law. One option is better signage at pharmacy counters to warn customers about how much medicine they can buy.

“We think the law is working,” said Sen. Tim Skinner, a Democrat from Terre Haute. “There are ways we can make this law better but I think in Sally's case what she's really guilty of is not knowing what the law was.”

But how effective is the law? When it was first passed the number of methamphetamine labs busted dropped dramatically. But the numbers have crept back up and will top an all time high this year at more than 1100 meth labs found by police.

Meth keeps Indiana State Police Trooper Chip Ayres busy.

“Their grandpa made moonshine, their daddy grew marijuana and they're going to make methamphetamine because they were raised as outlaws,” he quipped about meth makers.

Trooper Ayres took our cameras into a field where meth makers had been at work.

“You'll actually see their path where it's worn through the beans where they actually come in and out,” he explained.

Ayres was in that field investigating the theft of another meth ingredient, anhydrous ammonia.

He also cleans up the labs and packs up the toxic debris left behind.

But there's only one way to safely put this debris down and that’s by venting the anhydrous ammonia while firefighters hose down the noxious cloud.

Indiana State Police Sergeant Niki Crawford says the drugs highly addictive nature fuels meth makers to resort to whatever means possible to gather the ingredients.

“Once you're hooked on the drug, you gotta have access to it,” Sgt. Crawford explained. “And the easiest way to have access to it is to make it yourself.”

Police know that meth cooks recruit people to buy the cold medicine they need.

“So their friends supply them with pills, they make the meth for them and trade meth for pills or money for pills,” Crawford said.

Vermillion County Prosecutor Alexander talked about one case where a man admitted he works for meth makers.

“I had one young man in court who actually said to the judge he wanted an attorney and the judge said, 'Do you have an attorney?' and he said 'Not really, I drive around and buy cold medicine.'”

There is no computerized system to track those who buy cold medicine. Police have to search pharmacy logs to look for matches. And pill buyers know that traveling from town to town gives them a lesser chance of being caught.
Pharmacists tell I-Team 8 that as many as three out of every four boxes of cold medicine end up as methamphetamine.

Oregon passed a law making cold medicine containing pseudoephedrine available only by prescription. The number of meth labs in the state plummeted.

Senator Skinner says that option may also be debated for changes in Indiana's law.

As for Sally Harpold, she just wants the case against her to go away.

“I want my name cleared,” she told us. “I have a record now for buying cold medication. I don't know any law abiding citizen out there that would not want that cleaned up.”