Shutting off meth pipeline should be priority

The number of meth labs in Nebraska has dropped precipitously as the Combat Meth Act made it more difficult to obtain some of the key ingredients to manufacture the drug in clandestine labs.

There were 228 meth lab incidents in Nebraska in 2005, but that dropped to only 16 in 2007, one year after the 2006 law was passed.

You may have noticed that it became harder to buy some cold and allergy medicines when the act went into effect; some nonprescription drugs were no longer available over the counter, but required face-to-face contact with someone behind the pharmacy counter, as well as signing for the ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, which can only be purchased in small quantities.

Sen. Ben Nelson hopes the Combat Meth Act can be modified with a new law to make meth labs even harder to operate. A bill to do so passed the Senate last year, but has yet to make it to the president's desk.

The new bill will require retail sellers of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine to better train their employees to comply with the law and then publicly register on the Drug Enforcement Administration Web site.

Officials say it is difficult to determine which stores have not complied with the original meth bill, and it certainly does appear to need modification.

And there's no doubt that methamphetamine is an extremely addictive, dangerous and destructive drug.

But cracking down on local manufacture of methamphetamine has had the effect of increasing the street price to the point that production has shifted to "superlabs" in the southwestern United States and Mexico.

Shutting off the main meth pipeline to those labs should be the top priority.