Published: September 05, 2009 11:00 pm         

Tribune-Star editorial: Meth laws need a little tweaking

The continuing epidemic of methamphetamine addiction, manufacture and sales is one of the most negative forces in our extended community. No one but people addicted to meth (and people making money off addicts) is against strict enforcement of meth laws. No one wants to make the job of fighting the illegal industry any tougher.

However, what happened to Sally Harpold is a sign that some of the laws, and their enforcement, need some tweaking.

A Parke County grandmother and employee of the Rockville Correctional Facility, Harpold was awakened early one morning in July by pounding on her door. She and her husband looked out and saw a phalanx of police cars. Their first thought was that something terrible had happened to a loved one. Instead, the officers had come for Sally.

Four months before, with H1N1 and other viruses spreading misery, Harpold had made the kind of “error” any of us can imagine making: In one week’s time in March, she bought a box of Zyrtec-D cold medicine in Rockville for her daughter and a box of Mucinex-D, which helps break up congestion, in Clinton for her husband. Both contain pseudoephedrine, a useful cold remedy, but also a key ingredient for cooking meth.

Harpold had no idea the two medicines had put her .6 gram over the state limit for seven-day purchases of such drugs. Like many of us, she thought the feedback was instant; if you were over some legal limit, the pharmacist was alerted and you couldn’t buy the medicine.

She thought wrong. In late July, she was arrested, handcuffed, driven to jail in Clinton, booked and photographed. As she chronicled in a letter to news media, her mug shot ended up on the front page of her local newspaper in a story about a successful drug sweep.

Harpold’s husband, Ted, paid $300 to get her out of jail. To fulfill the requirements of a deferral agreement — the best the Vermillion County Prosecutor could offer so Harpold’s previously unsullied record could be wiped clean — she had to pay another $218.

Harpold is angry about every bit of this, and she continues to publicly complain. Various law-and-order officials involved have been sympathetic, to a point, but Vermillion Prosecutor Nina Alexander reiterated the bottom line. Ignorance of the law is no excuse, Alexander told Tribune-Star reporter Lisa Trigg: “I’m simply enforcing the law as it was written.”

Of over-the-counter medicines like Zyrtec and Mucinex, Alexander said, “If you take these products, you ought to know what’s in them.”

Perhaps state lawmakers, police and pharmacists can help.

Instead of a sign that warns customers only of a “Meth Watch” in a pharmacy, how about an easy-to-read table that provides the number of grams of offending ingredients in each box of the monitored medicines, along with Indiana’s 3.0 limit? Most boxes provide per pill measurements, requiring some math that’s not all that simple in a flu-addled brain.

It’s too late for Harpold, but can’t police and prosecutors be given some latitude to use their experience and common sense to look closely at any future suspects like her? With no criminal record, no physical appearance of meth involvement and a believable explanation, didn’t she deserve another assessment to see if that one week in March was unique or part of a pattern? Is a dismissal never in order?

One thing that could (and should) be done for Harpold: Strapped for funds though counties and the state may be, someone needs to give her $518 a.s.a.p. — and present the check in a ceremony that will be appropriately covered by her local news media.