Some police chiefs, not pleased with AG's opinion on meth law

TULSA - Just two weeks ago, the city of Okmulgee passed an ordinance requiring the sale of pseudoephdrine in tablet form be prescription-only, but despite the attorney general's ruling the city is determined to fight the key ingredient in meth.

In fact, Okmulgee pharmacists Chuck Walton's has been monitoring who he sells products with pseudoephedrine to all along.

"Legally there's maybe not a way to do it, but morally there is something we can do," said Walton.

He only sells pseudoephedrine products to people he knows or to frequent customers. For a couple of weeks, he could only sell the tablet form to people who had prescriptions for it, but on Friday Oklahoma's Attorney General said that cities don't have the power to create such a law, only the state does.

After the decision came down, Okmulgee's Police Chief, Joe Prentice, said he asked the city attorney for guidance, and for now, his officers are not enforcing the city's pseudoephedrine law until they get clarity from the city attorney.

Still, Prentice says when he got word of the attorney general's opinion, he wasn't too pleased.

"Disappointed because our efforts were an attempt to make the streets of Okmulgee safer," said Chief Prentice.

It all started when state Representative Mike Ritze asked the AG to look into the law. Ritze said he was getting questions about the legality of the law from city officials in his district so he asked the state's top prosecutor to look into it.

"As a legislator that's what we do all the time," said Ritze, (R)-Broken Arrow.

Beyond that, Representative Ritze says he's not sure we need a statewide law restricting the sale of products containing pseudoephedrine. He says the law that the state has in place that limits the amount of sudafed products one can purchase is a good one.

"The tracking system, I don't think, is fully utilized yet, and we need to continue to use that before we enact any other laws that could punish innocent citizens, people that are allergy suffers that need to take medication," said Ritze.

Still Chief Prentice says the current law isn't working well enough. Since January of 2010 Okmulgee has had 27 meth labs, and each law takes officers off the streets. On average, an officer spends seven hours at each meth lab.

"What are you waiting on. Take a statewide approach. Fix the problem, or let us do it," said Prentice.

State lawmakers will conduct an interim study to look at making pseudoephedrine prescription-only on a statewide basis.

City leaders in Pryor were set to vote on a ordinance regarding pseudoephedrine sales on Monday night, but after the AG's ruling, they decided to put their efforts on lobbying state lawmakers to pass a statewide law instead.