>On Fri, Sep 12, 2008 at 4:40 PM, Dwayne Monroe <dwayne.monroe at gmail.com>wrote:
>the complacent shopper who, we're routinely
>told, 'doesn't know where his food comes from',
What about the country mouse who doesn't know where his drugs come from? This New Jersey connection may be dead, but it doesn't matter since meth manufacturing has moved to Mexico.
http://newsok.com/oklahoma-fighting-meth-in-new-venue/article/3291592/?tm=1220239941
Mon September 1, 2008
By Jay F. Marks Staff Writer
The crackdown on illegal drug makers in Oklahoma continues with federal prosecutors seeking more than $2 million in civil penalties from a New Jersey vitamin company.
D&E Pharmaceuticals and owner Eric J. Organ are accused of repeatedly violating the federal Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970 by selling precursor substances that were used to manufacture methamphetamine in clandestine labs in Oklahoma, despite repeated warnings by state and federal officials.
The "defendants acted with reckless disregard for the illegal manner to which their pseudoephedrine products were being used,” prosecutors said in a complaint filed Aug. 18 in federal court in Oklahoma City.
Organ, a 51-year-old New Jersey resident, also faces criminal charges in Oklahoma County District Court after being indicted May 8 by the state's multicounty grand jury. He is charged with racketeering, conspiracy, seven counts of selling products used as a precursor in the manufacture of methamphetamine and 12 counts of distribution of controlled substances.
The indictment lists sales of almost 6 million tablets worth more than $700,000 in Oklahoma between 2002 and 2006. Organ has denied any wrongdoing.
An investigation by the state attorney general's office and the federal Drug Enforcement Administration is ongoing.
Numbers decreasing
Methamphetamine labs plagued Oklahoma earlier this decade as amateur chemists used a variety of readily available ingredients to manufacture the highly addictive drug.
A 2004 law restricting the sale of pseudoephedrine an over-the-counter cough medicine vital to the process has all but eliminated the problem.
The number of clandestine labs is down 90 percent since that law was enacted, said Mark Woodward, spokesman for the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs.
"Labs are still there, but they're manageable now,” he said.
Several years ago, authorities were investigating as many as 150 labs a month, Woodward said.
That figure now has dropped to five to 15 a month, he said, mostly in border counties where it is easier to bring in pseudoephedrine from other states.
Woodward said most states restrict pseudoephedrine sales, but the Oklahoma law the first of its kind in the nation is the only one to tie pharmacy records together in a state-run database.
Such laws have reduced the number of clandestine labs in the U.S., but authorities still are struggling to curtail the meth epidemic with large quantities of the drug coming from Mexico.