A shelf full of everyday cold and allergy medications stands behind the counter at As Prescribed pharmacy in Hanford.

To buy a box of Sudafed there, customers are now required by law to show ID and sign a log book.

"It's inconvenient for our customers because the only people hurting are the law-abiding citizens," said Brian Benson, owner of As Prescribed. "I do have many customers complain about it."

The process is more cumbersome at Rite Aid across town, where the customers must pick up a ticket, hand it to a pharmacist and swipe their ID on a machine.

The idea behind this 1-year-old restriction is to keep meth dealers from stockpiling pseudoephedrine, a vital ingredient in meth production.

Under the new federal law, customers must show ID to buy pseudoephedrine (PSE), and the legal limit for purchases is 9 grams per month -- roughly the equivalent of six 24-dose boxes of Sudafed or two 15-dose boxes of 24-hour Claritin D.

To the eyes of the average citizens, this law, tacked onto the Patriot Act which was renewed last year, may just mean a nuisance.

But to the eyes of narcotics enforcement officials, the law has had its intended effect: Reducing the production of meth.

"The law has gone a long way," said William Ruzzamenti, director of the Central Valley High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA), a federal program that coordinates anti-meth efforts in a nine-county area from Sacramento to Bakersfield.

"It has been very useful in deterring the manufacturing of meth not only in California but the rest of the country."

Ruzzamenti said the number of meth lab busts has plummeted since the passage of the law.

In the early 2000s, there were nearly 2,000 meth labs and dump sites, including about 200 of the so-called "superlabs," but in 2006, the Valley reported the take down of only 39 labs, Ruzzamenti said.

Although Ruzzamenti says the anti-meth legislation threw a "bucket of water" on manufacturing in the country, the absence of home-cooked meth hasn't produced a decline in overall use of the drug.

The decrease in production caused by a squeeze in the domestic supply of PSE has simply been offset by increased meth production in Mexico and Asia -- a phenomenon known as the "balloon effect."

"As long as there is a demand, there'll always be a supply," said Cmdr. Robert Pennal, head of the state-funded Fresno Meth Task Force.

"Because we shut down small town mom-and-pop labs, these addicts are turning elsewhere to feed their habit. Mexican drug traffickers have come in and filled the void."

Meth produced in Mexico is often made in superlabs, which could produce 10 to 100 pounds of meth per cooking cycle, and they are usually in remote areas and hard to find, according to the 2007 National Drug Threat Assessment.

A crackdown in Mexico has led the criminal organizations to import PSE from Asia as well.

The international efforts are under way to counteract this balloon effect.

Over the last three years, Mexico has curbed the amount of PSE shipped into the country by nearly 70 percent and has dedicated 2,000 police officers to combat drug cartels, Pennal said..

"Mexico is doing what it can to fight the problem," Pennal said.

Law enforcement is celebrating the fact that the meth prices have skyrocketed over the course of the last few months.

Pennal and Ruzzamenti called it a good sign that the tailwind is on the side of law enforcement.

The wholesale value of meth in the Valley has jumped from $8,000 to $10,000 per pound to a whopping $18,000-$20,000 during the past six months, according to Ruzzamenti.

"What that tells you," Pennal said, "is all of the law enforcement and all of the aggressive enforcement in Mexico have impacted their ability to manufacture meth."

In attempts to fight meth -- and the availability of its key components -- most states and the federal government have passed a series of laws limiting the amount of pseudoephedrine-containing drugs individuals can purchase at one time.

The measure, written by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Sen. Jim Talent, R-Mo., was tacked on to the anti-terrorism legislation, the USA Patriot Act, which was reauthorized in March 2006.

Numerous localities such as Fresno County also passed ordinances to further restrict sales of PSE-based products.

In 2005, Oklahoma was the first state to restrict the availability of PSE.

But Oregon went further during that year and became the first state to require prescriptions for any medications containing PSE.

This year, Kentucky became the first state to use a computerized tracking system that allows law enforcement to quickly spot suspicious PSE purchase patterns.

Washington state last year enacted a law that restricts the purchase of iodine and an animal supplement used in meth production.

Ruzzamenti says all these legislative actions at all levels of government -- and the actions by Canada and Mexico -- are helping U.S. law enforcement "keep the pressure on" the international meth industry.

"We can either push these guys off the edge or we can let them crawl up the cliff," Ruzzamenti said. "We need to stay vigilant. We need to kick these bad guys when they are down so they can't get back up."

The reporter can be reached at 582-0471, ext. 3059.

(Sept. 29, 2007)