Anti meth bill goes down in the Assembly
By a vote of 27 to 14 (one abstention), AB 150, a bill to combat the proliferation of methamphetamine labs in Nevada, failed to meet a 2/3 requirement for passage today in the Assembly.
Despite the building of a strong coalition of businesses, law enforcement, substance abuse counselors and families to combat methamphetamine this session, in the end, a vocal minority of the business community objected to a key provision of the bill, and persuaded Republican members to vote against this important step forward in protecting our kids and families.
Section 41 of the bill would have required businesses wishing to sell pseudoephedrine to report their inventory four times a year, and was the key provision with which opponents took exception. We heard from opponents about the burden on businesses needing to do the paper work, the likelihood that businesses would “cook the books” in the face of this legislation (don’t we think better of business owners?), the burden on consumers to get cold medicine (just show your ID and you’re fine, not to mention the pseudoephedrine alternatives now available.)
As I’ve blogged previously, regulating the availability of pseudoephedrine is one of the most effective strategies for dealing with methamphetamine abuse. Retail businesses keep inventories. All the bill asked for was that those businesses share data four times a year so that we could get a picture of the amount of precursor material moving in and out of our state. This is a tool law enforcement had requested, and as states around us toughen their meth laws, without it, we stand to see an increase in meth labs- if we’re the easiest state for the meth cooks to obtain large quantities of pseudoephedrine, where else would they go?
Rising in support of the bill on the floor today, I told the story of some friends of mine with a daughter addicted to methamphetamine. She, we’ll call her “Mary,” drifts in and out of their lives as her addiction worsens and wanes. Mary’s family is never quite sure where she is, who she’s with, or how she’s doing. As I explained on the floor, we don’t know the end of Mary’s story yet. I hope it’s a good one, but the waiting and uncertainty of whether Mary will eventually be able to beat her addiction is part of the story many Nevada families are experiencing.
We in the Assembly were presented a choice today: how to balance the potential burden on select businesses, needing to report inventory four times a year, against the burden placed on the thousands of Nevada families trying to save their loved ones captured by this dangerous drug?
The Legislature failed today to act in support of families like Mary’s. In conversations with the media immediately after the floor session, I was asked a question meant to clarify the implications of the vote in terms common to most of our business here in the Legislature: “who won and who lost?” The first part of the answer is clear: Nevada’s families and children lost today.
The second part of the answer was harder. While the opponents we’re successful in defeating the bill, did they “win?” Did anyone win?
UPDATE: AP, “Key anti-meth bill dies in Nevada Assembly.” KRNV, “Bill to Combat Meth Use in Nevada Loses by One Vote.” LVRJ, “Assembly Republicans oppose bill affecting convenience stores.”
May 22nd, 2007 at 3:11 pm
Very nice synopsis Assemblyman. As you know we fought hard to make this a bill that would not keep these precursor drugs out of the hands of the public, just out of the hands of the people that use them to make meth.
I wanted to explain why the bill needed a 2/3rds vote. The original intent of the compromise was to remove the portion of the bill that made cold medicenes a prescription drug and replace it with langauge that made it so you could only buy from a Pharmacy. We heard from people in the rural counties that they wouldn’t be able to get them becasue they didn’t have a 24 hour pharmacy. So we then agreed to create a system whereby “mom and pop” convenience stores could sell after they registered with the State Board of Pharmacy. That regististration cost $100 per year. That fee increase mandated the 2/3rd’s.
Could we have taken that out so we only needed a simple majority. Yes. But we decided that the impact on the rurals would be too great. Surely one Republican would see the need for this legislation.
We were wrong.
May 22nd, 2007 at 5:00 pm
Nope. Nobody won. Everyone loses. The defeat of this is clearly bad for Nevada’s economy.
May 23rd, 2007 at 10:40 am
[…] Second, get a load of this post on the defeat of “Anti-meth” bill (AB 150) on the Blogging Assemblyman David Bobzien’s website. Apparently the key problem with AB 150 was that it required retail businesses wanting to sell pseudoephedrine to report their inventory four times a year: We heard from opponents about the burden on businesses needing to do the paper work, the likelihood that businesses would “cook the books” in the face of this legislation (don’t we think better of business owners?), the burden on consumers to get cold medicine (just show your ID and you’re fine, not to mention the pseudoephedrine alternatives now available.) […]
May 23rd, 2007 at 5:50 pm
I have asked the City Attorney whether the City could require those reporting documents without state law. We may be able to get around it locally by creating local laws.
May 23rd, 2007 at 11:57 pm
Tom,
That’s a necessary and great explanation as to why the 2/3 was required. I appreciate that. Dave, if that’s possible, do you think it can get done in the Council?
May 24th, 2007 at 2:29 pm
I have asked the City Attorney to study it. We are not a “home rule” state meaning that we can only do locally what the legislature allows us to do. I did point out that we legislated the selling of spray paint to work on the graffiti problem, we require pawn shops to report DAILY on what they pawn, so I don’t see why we can’t do something like AB150.
May 24th, 2007 at 4:04 pm
Dave- thanks for looking into it and for your support of this issue.
May 31st, 2007 at 12:25 pm
Thanks to the leadership of our new Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto, AB150, shall live again. It’s a little different now in that the sales of the cold medicines that contain pseudo ephedrine will be limited to pharmacies only. The original bill set forth a process so that convenience stores could get licensed to sell. Because they don’t handle drugs the same as a pharmacy we wanted anyone who sold them to report their inventory data on a quarterly basis. That reporting requirement is what prompted Assembly Republicans to kill AB150.
While we would still like to have the reporting element, we are confident that by limiting sales to Pharmacies only access by those tweakers that want to make meth will be greatly reduced. With the passage of AB 148 Nevada will join 16 other states in limiting sales to pharmacies and the states that have done so have seen a great reduction in the number of new meth labs. I want to thank Asemblyman Bernie Anderson, Assemblywoman Sheila Leslie and of course the AG for seeing this through. If you see them, let them know you appreciate their work too.