Legislation to loosen time restrictions on the over-the-counter purchase of a popular decongestant is before the Kentucky House. The bill, sponsored by GOP Bowling Green Representative Mark Duvall, pertains to pseudoephedrine. The western Kentucky lawmaker said current law allows for three months of this medicine per year.
“Then you’d have to ask your spouse or your kids or someone else to go to be pseudoephed for you. It just really wasn’t very practical,” said Duvall.
Duvall said the medication is widely used by allergy sufferers and often needed to get a good night’s rest. He noted the bill allows for a monthly restriction, not an annual limit. Duvall added still required are the showing of a driver’s license and purchases would continue to be tracked. In past years pseudoephedrine was purchased to carry out methamphetamine production.
Tight restrictions were placed on the drug in 2006 to help combat methamphetamine production. Mark Duvall said meth lab explosions in Kentucky have all but stopped.
“At the time we had about over a thousand meth labs in Kentucky. Now, I understand there’s only about a thousand in the entire country now,” said Duvall.
Duvall said that’s partly because meth comes to the state through other means.
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