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New drug legislation unanimously passes Ohio General Assembly
BENJAMIN WHITE
Associate Editor
Published: December 17, 2012
On Dec. 5, the Ohio House of Representatives unanimously passed new legislation intended to fight the rise of synthetic drugs such as methamphetamine.
House Bill 334, which the Ohio Senate also unanimous passed, requires over-the-counter ephedrine and pseudoephedrine products such as Sudafed to be electronically tracked through a national database known as the National Precursor Log Exchange (NPLEx).
The legislation also updates Ohio’s controlled substance analogue law, which Judge Elinore Marsh Stormer of the Summit County Court of Common Pleas recently upheld after it was challenged for being impermissibly vague.
"This new legislation will save lives, and it will help local and state law enforcement put synthetic drug traffickers in jail," said Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine in a press release after the bill’s passage. "These drugs are a serious problem, and we want them out of Ohio."
Because the General Assembly declared the bill an emergency measure, it is not subject to the Ohio Constitution’s requisite referendum.
NPLEx, adopted in the first few years of the 2000s, new serves half of the states in the union. The program tracks ephedrine and pseudoephedrine purchases in real time. The network, a partnership between government and Appriss, Inc. is offered free of charge to any state with applicable legislation. Funding comes entirely from OTC medicine manufacturers through the Consumer Healthcare Products Association, and the National Association of Drug Diversion Investigators, a nonprofit multidisciplinary organization, provides oversight.
Any attempt to purchase any product containing methamphetamine precursors will require the customer’s purchase history to be checked. If the purchase is allowed, the customer’s name and address, the product type and amount, the date and time of purchase and characteristics of the required government ID will be logged.
Before the bill’s passage, similar legislation required retailers to maintain a logbook of all pseudoephedrine product purchases. Legislators expect the new law to speed up the process electronically while providing a way for retailers to track customers’ purchases of similar products.
The system will also alert cashiers with a “stop-sale” notice when the purchase limit of pseudoephedrine or ephedrine product for the customer has been met. The state purchase limit mirrors that of federal law, which limits the amount of such drugs to be purchased at 3.6 grams per day. In addition, Ohio law (O.R.C. 2925.55(B)(1)) limits customers to purchasing no more than 9 grams of such products over a period of 30 days.
“However,” reads the Ohio Legislative Service Commission’s analysis of the bill, “a retailer or terminal distributor is permitted to complete the sale even though the Exchange has generated a stop-sale alert if the retailer or terminal distributor has a reasonable fear of imminent bodily harm should the sale not be completed.”
Law enforcement agencies will have access to all NPLEx records through the Ohio Attorney General’s office in real time. The law also guarantees that the program will be offered free of charge to all retailers.
The bill also updated portions of R.C. Chapter 3719 that went into effect in October 2011 as a part of H.B. 64 and served as the first controlled substance analogue legislation in the state. The majority of the bill reads identically to the Federal Analogue Act, which defines a controlled substance analogue as a substance with a chemical structure “substantially similar” to that of a Schedule I or II controlled substance that has or is intended to have a “substantially similar” effect on the nervous system.
In October, Judge Stormer of the Summit County Court of Common Pleas upheld the statute, which a defendant had challenged with claims that the phrase “substantially similar” is an unconstitutionally and unscientifically vague.
The new bill updates the charging and sentencing guidelines for those convicted of crimes involving controlled substance analogue and makes them more analogous to those of Schedule I and II drug offenses. The largest change involves a switch from a general charge of aggravated trafficking in drugs to a new charge: trafficking in a controlled substance analog. Sentences were also modified, and the bill states that convicts of crimes involving 50 grams or more of a controlled substance analogue will be classified as a “major drug offender,” which carries sentencing ramifications.
H.B. 334 also amended Ohio controlled substances schedules, adding several synthetic derivatives of cathinone found in bath salts to Schedule 1 and replacing specific synthetic cannabinoids (“K2” and “spice”) with broader groups of similar drugs.
The law’s provisions pertaining to NPLEx take effect 90 after its effective date. The provisions dealing with the controlled substance analogues and controlled substance schedules will take immediate effect.