NASHVILLE-Senate Speaker Ron Ramsey said Thursday that, while he backs a new computer-tracking system for cold and sinus remedies with pseudoephedrine, the state eventually may have to require the drugs be made available by prescription only.
The Blountville Republican said if he had been asked just two months ago whether he would ever consider requiring that pseudoephedrine – the main ingredient in methamphetamine – be sold by prescription, “I probably would have said no.”
“But,” he told reporters, “I’ve also seen the real scourge that drug is on our society. So I’m getting closer and closer to agreeing that it does need to be prescription only.”
Ramsey quickly added that he still thinks the computer-tracking bill sponsored by Sen. Mae Beavers, R-Mount Juliet, “is the best way to do this.”
He said officials should let the tracking system work for a year or two and “see if that makes an appreciable difference to where we don’t go back home and have to tell … our law-abiding citizens they’re being punished.”