New Initiative to Stop Meth Precursor Sales

Save Our Society from Drugs, Drug Free America Foundation and the Coalition for a Secure Driver’s License Announce a Nationwide Outreach!

New York, NY- 7/30/07 – The Coalition for a Secure Driver's License (CSDL), a grassroots organization with members in 48 of the 50 states, today announced a new alliance with Save Our Society From Drugs (S.O.S.), an organization dedicated to preventing, countering and refuting drug legalization efforts, and Drug Free America Foundation (DFAF), a drug policy and prevention organization dedicated to fighting drug use, drug addiction and drug trafficking and to promoting effective, sound drug policies, education and prevention.

“Together, our three organizations plan to raise awareness of the link between fake IDs or fraudulently obtained driver’s licenses and the illicit purchase of controlled over-the-counter drugs used to manufacture methamphetamine,” according to Neil Berro, spokesman for the Coalition for a Secure Driver's License. “It is our goal to raise awareness and initiate change through educational contacts with state legislatures and elected officials of city and county governments throughout the country,” he continued.

The Coalition's primary goal is to encourage state and local leaders to set higher standards for the issuance of driver’s licenses and ID cards in order to deny false identity documents. “The link between fake ID cards and the proliferation of methamphetamine makes a compelling additional argument for the need to tighten identity authentication and physical security requirements for state-issued driver's licenses and ID cards,” Berro added.

“Methamphetamine is one of the most dangerous illicit drugs with addiction growing very rapidly within the U.S.,” according to Calvina Fay, executive director of both S.O.S. and DFAF. “The drug is highly addictive, and chronic users are subject to violent behavior, anxiety, paranoia, delusions, mood disturbances and/or homicidal and suicidal thoughts. The drug is proving particularly attractive to the poor, resulting in an undermining of inner city and rural communities across the nation,” she added.

Meth is a homegrown killer with distribution fueled through illicit production in clandestine laboratories using controlled, over-the-counter cough, cold or allergy medications. “In 2005, the federal government passed the Meth Act and began regulating the purchase of Sudafed and other cold and allergy medications in an attempt to stem the tide of methamphetamine production and abuse in the U.S. Today illegal methamphetamine manufacturers are circumventing the law by relying on individuals, known as mules, with counterfeit identification cards to travel drug store to drug store to purchase the needed medications,” Fay added. “It is our belief that states that shore up the security of their driver’s licenses and other identification will go a long way toward putting teeth in the Meth Act and stopping meth abuse. We look forward to working with the Coalition for a Secure Driver's License in this effort,” she concluded.