Tulsa, Oklahoma: Ayden Ross Jennings, who died on November 10, 2011, was just 15 months old when he lost his life in a meth lab fire in his mother’s home. The boy’s mother, Jennifer Michelle Jennings, 26, and Jacob Allen Bell, 35, are both facing charges of manufacturing meth and two counts of child neglect for making meth with two children present, children that included Ayden and another 5 year old child. Jeffrey Wayne McBride, 47, was also charged with manufacturing meth, after investigators said he admitted to them that he manufactured methamphetamine in the duplex, the day before Ayden’s death. McBride is being held on $507,500 bond; Jennings on a $200,500 bond, and Bell on a bond set at $62,500.
Donald Hogue, Ayden’s father, arrived in Tulsa on Saturday after David Starkey, founder of stopmethlabs.com, flew him back to Oklahoma from his home in Washington, so he could attend the funeral of his young son. Oklahoma legislators were also invited by
Hogue to attend Ayden’s funeral today, so they could witness the tragic loss of his young son’s life.
“I hold every Oklahoma Legislator accountable that came out against OK HB 1235 and the ones who accepted the blood money from the drug lobby. This includes former Representative Dan Sullivan who has now admitted that he is the one that refused to take it to the house floor but he is not alone. What I want to know just how much money was my child’s life worth? How much was given to the legislature by The Consumer Health Care Products Association, Pfizer or any of the other pseudoephedrine manufacturer? I promise to find out how much blood money was accepted by legislators and make it very public. I do not want Ayden’s death to be for nothing and I am going to do all in my power to see that a prescription law is passed in Oklahoma and in the rest of the county. This is the only way to stop these children from burning to death in these meth lab explosions.”
Oklahoma legislators failed to pass legislation that would have made pseudoephedrine in pill-form a prescription drug in Oklahoma. If a prescription pseudoephedrine drug law had been passed last year, it would have become effective on November 1, 2011, nine days before Ayden’s tragic death. Pseudoephedrine is the only ingredient in a meth recipe that can’t be substituted with something else, so meth-makers can’t make meth without it.
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Just OK
Prescriptions for cold medicine and “Wandering Weaver” goes to Bourbon Country?
We have another case of the government punishing the people to catch the less than 1% misusing a common product, using flawed data to back up their “logic”.
Now common cold remedies using ephedrine and pseudoephedrine are sold at drug stores everywhere. But those ingredients are used in producing meth too. So to “solve” the meth problem Senator Tom Jensen (R-Kentucky) will force you to go to the doctor to treat your sniffles. Doesn’t make sense.
The problem isn’t the medicine, the problem is how it’s being misused.
Senator Jensen proposes to punish the 99% that are using the medicine correctly. Even our own Darryl Weaver, head of the Bureau of Narcotics in Oklahoma weighed in for Kentucky. In Kentucky. In Kentucky? Wandering Weaver went to Kentucky … to help Oklahoma? How does that work?
Mr. Weaver believes the potency of home made meth is greater than that smuggled in from Mexico. Somehow he believes you shouldn’t be able to get common cold tablets for your kids at the corner drug store. But the law of supply and demand exists in the illegal drug industry too. Prices are decreasing as purity levels are increasing in an effort to attract users. Purity has increased to 90 percent even as the price per gram has dropped to about $89, according to a federal Drug Enforcement Agency database and reported in the study.
But as Senator Jensen proposes to restrict your rights in a misguided effort to stop home-made meth, it ignores the ingenuity of the drug lords. According to Jane Maxwell, senior researcher at The University of Texas, meth purveyors are getting around restrictions on pseudoephedrine by turning to a manufacturing method that uses different chemicals.
“It’s not surprising that meth use is rebounding”, Maxwell said in the journal Addictive Behaviors in December 2011, “that’s the pattern during the decades that meth has been used. It really is a cyclical pattern of use is up, we put in barriers to producing it or to prevent it from being obtained and that takes it down for a little while,” she said. “But then it goes back up again.” The recent down cycle occurred after sale of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine were severely restricted. The up cycle began as makers of the drug in Mexico reverted to another method called P2P for the principal chemicals involved.
Wandering Weaver should stay home and solve our problems here.
So why is Oklahoma punishing it’s law abiding residents in an effort to chase a problem that already has been side stepped by the drug lords?
Meth Lab Homes
While I agree that The Combat Meth Act 2005, which required pseudoephedrine to be placed behind the counter, provided only a temporary decrease in meth manufacturing in the U.S., that argument doesn’t hold true when states implement PSE prescription laws. Oregon and Mississippi, who witnessed a dramatic decrease in meth labs after implementing their own prescription PSE laws, have continued to reap the benefits of having prescription laws in place. If a prescription PSE law had been implemented in Oklahoma, innocent children like Ayden Jennings and the three young children from Del City that died in meth lab fires might still be alive.
I agree with you that the purity of methamphetamine has gone up and the price of methamphetamine has gone down, however I disagree with your logic about why that’s happening. The reason why the purity of meth is going up and the price is going down has nothing to do with attracting more people to use it. The purity of meth is going up because people are buying meth made by their neighborhood meth cook, which results in them getting a stronger, more-pure product. When a meth addict buys meth from a Mexican supplier, let’s say for argument’s sake, they are not getting the same meth that was shipped in from Mexico. Once meth gets to the U.S. and passes through a multitude of dealers’ hands, it has been diluted several times by the time it reaches the neighborhoods in our communities.
Lastly, I have to disagree that that 99% of Oklahoma’s citizens would be punished by a pseudoephedrine prescription law. If we’re talking about percentages, let’s be truthful about it. If you’re saying that 99% of the population would be punished by having to get a prescription for pseudoephedrine, we have to assume that 99% of the population in Oklahoma actually need pseudoephedrine for legitimate health reasons. I find that reasoning very hard to swallow. We’re talking about one ingredient, a decongestant, found in SOME cold and allergy medicines. We’re not talking about water here. I’d have an easier time accepting your argument then. The fact is that the majority of Oklahomans would be protected if meth-makers weren’t able to walk in to their neighborhood store and buy pseudoephedrine by simply showing them an ID or asking others to do the same for them. The illegal manufacture of meth effects everyone both personally and financially in a community and I do mean everyone. Oklahoma legislators, like legislators in the rest of the U.S., need to follow the path of Oregon and Mississippi and make pseudoephedrine a prescription drug, if they want to protect the rights of ALL citizens.
If Oklahoma passes a pseudoephedrine prescription law it would be the most honorable, ethical, and fiscally responsible thing they could do to put an end to meth labs, with the exception of banning PSE completely. Oklahoma legislators need to focus on first keeping PSE out of the hands of meth lab cooks and put that problem behind them, so can then can turn their focus on helping those who have become addicted to meth and the illegal imports of meth that may come in to the state from Mexico and elsewhere. When meth isn’t being made in OK in sufficient quantities, addicts will have to rely on imported meth which is less potent and less addictive than the home-brewed methamphetamine that destroying communities and the people who live in them.