Senator To Sponsor Pseudoephedrine Bill

{Kentucky}...Authorities had a 2 year old girl checked for exposure to methamphetamine Thursday night after finding her at a mobile home in Wayne County where people had allegedly made meth. Kentucky is on track to have an all-time high number of meth-lab cases this year, according to state police. There had been 809 cases recorded by the end of August. That's 20 percent more than in the same period in 2010. Dan Smoot, law-enforcement director of Operation UNITE, says, "It's just going to get worse until we do something." The issue of requiring a prescription for medicine containing pseudoephedrine has been controversial in Kentucky. State Senator Tom Jensen, a London Republican who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he will sponsor a bill in the 2012 General Assembly to deal with the issue of meth labs. Jensen said requiring a prescription for pseudoephedrine would slash the number of meth labs in the state. A pharmaceutical industry group lobbied heavily against such a proposal in the Kentucky legislature in 2010 and earlier this year. The Consumer Healthcare Products Association argues that requiring a prescription would drive up health care costs and create a hardship for law-abiding citizens who want certain cold and allergy remedies. The association also argues that the state has an effective tracking system to enforce limits on how much pseudoephedrine people can buy under state law.