Agent Patrick Doyle combs through the loose pieces of paper in a cardboard box.
The box contains the handwritten names and addresses of those buying pseudoephedrine, a main ingredient in meth. Some of the buyers use names like Mickey Mouse or other made-up characters.
Pharmacies in Tennessee are required to keep track of each pseudoephedrine buyer, and many use a state-run computer database to do so. But in Georgia, there is no such statewide database and tracking is done by individual pharmacies.
Agents with the Lookout Mountain Judicial Circuit Drug Task Force must go to each store and hand collect the information, which they place in the box.
“We have to go from store to store to store,” said Agent Doyle, deputy commander of the task force. “And then we have to prove that it was, in fact, that person that produced that identification to buy those pills.”