A national organization trying to beat back a Kentucky bill making pseudoephedrine a prescription-only drug spent five times as much as any other group lobbying state lawmakers last month.
The Courier-Journal reports the Consumer Healthcare Products Association of Washington, D.C spent nearly $195,000 lobbying Kentucky lawmakers in January.
Some Kentucky lawmakers and many law enforcement officials want to make pseudoephedrine available by prescription only because it’s a necessary ingredient in making meth, a drug that is ravaging rural parts of the Commonwealth.
The effort by the group dwarfs all other lobbying campaigns in Frankfort. Consumer Healthcare Products Association spent more on lobbying than the next eight largest groups combined.
Senator Robert Stivers—who is the sponsor of the bill the group is trying to defeat—told the Courier-Journal that the lobbying receipts are “an obscene amount of money to be spending in one month on one issue.”
The Consumer Healthcare Products Association is a group of manufacturers and distributors of over-the-counter medications whose members include Bayer Healthcare, GlaxoSmithKline, and Johnson & Johnson.
