Confessions of an Ephedrine Eater

With his weathered cowboy features, long hair and graying mustache, Larry resembles Western actor Sam Elliot. Most days, he wears a baseball cap bearing an image of the U.S. flag embroidered with the words "America United" with a gold fish hook stuck in its brim.

Larry loves his country but loathes his government's ongoing crackdown on ephedrine, which has accompanied a series of highly publicized ephedrine overdose deaths by Midwestern high school cheerleaders and professional athletes. Last month, under pressure from the Drug Enforcement Administration, the state of Iowa shut down Council Bluffs-based T&M Distributing, the largest legal wholesaler of pharmaceutical ephedrine in the country. Larry's supplier.

Now he's down to his last three cases of the good stuff. There are 144 bottles in a case, 100 pills per bottle, and Larry estimates he'll be dry in three to four weeks. Until then, his newspaper advertisements proclaim he's having a "BLOWOUT SALE!!"

The blowout price for Larry's ephedrine is 37 bucks per bottle, plus tax. Larry guesses that most months, he sells one case for a gross of more than $5,300 on ephedrine alone. "I'll sell two cases in April, and probably my last case during the first week or two in May," he says. "The word's out, and everyone's stocking up."

To buy ephedrine from Larry, you have to give him two pieces of I.D., which he meticulously copies on a machine in the back and then has you sign to authenticate. Larry's licensed to sell pure ephedrine by the DEA, whose agents pay him surprise visits to make sure he's not selling to anyone younger than eighteen or exceeding the maximum sale limits.

"I've spent the last three days on the computer trying to find a new distributor," Larry says. "The government's driving us all out of business. And this whole anti-ephedrine campaign is based on misinformation. CNN ran a big scare story not too long ago, and they have this pathetic guy on there who fried his brain on ephedrine. They just sorta slip it in there toward the end that this guy took fifty pills all at once. He didn't follow the label, man."

Larry's also stressing over Colorado House Bill 1137, introduced last month by Loveland Republican Tim Fritz. The proposed law -- which wouldn't be enforceable until next July -- would make it a felony for a retailer to knowingly sell any otherwise legal substance, like, say, cold medicine, that is then used to make crystal methamphetamine. The law is designed primarily to bust convenience-store owners who swear they have no idea why toothless Uncle Fester is buying five cases of Sudafed at a time.

But only bathtub meth cooks use cold tablets. The ones who actually know what they're doing -- who, like, understand chemistry and shit -- prefer pure ephedrine, the kind Larry sells.

"That law says I'm a felon if I 'know or should have known' someone was going to turn around and do something illegal with the ephedrine I sell them," says Larry. "How the hell are you going to figure out what I should have known? It's just more craziness. I mean, I'm in business to make money, but I do it legally. I'm not going to sell you two cases out the back; I don't care if you offer me 100 bucks a bottle. And believe me, I've had such offers."

But Larry admits there's no way to prevent meth cooks from sending in proxy buyers to score nine bottles at a time. "Right now, I know some of my regulars are having their wives or husbands come in and buy the maximum before I'm out," he says.

Now, I want to be clear here. I'm not saying that any of A Vitamin Store's customers have ever or will ever purchase ephedrine with the intent of doing anything other than treating their asthma, because if I did, Westword's libel lawyer would bitch-slap me. And there's nothing worse than being bitch-slapped by a lawyer.

Except maybe coming down off speed.

It's presently four in the morning, and I'm not feeling so good. I'm dry-mouthed, jittery, and I have to piss every five minutes. Plus the cops just blew away some kid who pointed a crossbow with a laser sight at them, practically outside my front door. I'm really wishing my shepherd would stop pacing, because the clicky-clack, clicky-clack of her toenails on the hardwood floors is driving me mad, and I've searched my apartment five times and still can't find the goddamn clippers. That, combined with the noise from the shooting scene outside, has set my skin crawling. I can't sleep. I'm spun. I'm shutting down now.

On my own, here we go.