ST. LOUIS — Federal officials here Wednesday praised an international agreement to monitor pseudoephedrine as a positive step in fighting methamphetamine. But local police say the problem here is not imported, it's homegrown.
John Walters, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, said combatting the meth problem was going to take both international and local controls of pseudoephedrine, a key ingredient in cold and allergy pills as well as in meth.

But Walters cautioned that in states with the greatest declines in meth labs, Mexican meth, or Ice, fills the void. And most of the pseudoephedrine imported to Mexico comes from the countries that make it: India, Germany and China.

Leaders from those countries signed an agreement Wednesday in St. Louis, pledging to continue monitoring pseudoephedrine imports and exports. The officials, as well as U.S. Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey, were in town for a national meth conference.

In 2007, police busted 1,185 meth labs in Missouri, making it the top state in the nation for confirmed meth labs. Illinois came in fourth with about 340.

Jefferson County logged 214 lab busts last year, the most of any county in Missouri. Most of those were mom-and-pop labs and involved addicts buying pseudoephedrine products to "cook" the drug, said Sgt. Gary Higginbotham.

"When you weigh them side by side, we have more of a lab problem than an imported meth problem," he said. "But we know it's coming."

Mexico banned importation of pseudoephedrine this year, and plans to declare the substance illegal in January 2009. As for the people of Mexico who rely on pseudoephedrine products to treat allergies and colds, Walters said, they are willing to suffer or use alternatives if it means an end to drug cartels.

"The Mexican attorney general told me, 'Last time I checked, nobody has ever died from a cold,'" Walters told the Post-Dispatch editorial board Wednesday. "For them, these drug cartels are trying to take over their country and make it so people run away from their country, and that's a problem for them and that's a problem for us. … Controlling precursors is the key, not just chasing labs."

Meth addicts in Illinois are turning to heroin, not imported meth, in the wake of declining local labs, said Master Sgt. Joe Beliveau of the Municipal Enforcement Group of Southwestern Illinois. Beliveau credits tough sentences for meth offenders in Illinois, along with the work of task forces, for the decline in lab busts. But he cautions that the problem is far from over.

"Labs have gone from 1,000-pill cooks to 100- and 200-pill cooks," he said. "So, we still have the same caliber of cooks, just not as many labs are being discovered now because they are smaller and more contained."

cbyers@post-dispatch.com | 636-500-4106