Anyone who buys cold medicines that can be turned into the illegal drug crystal meth would have their names and addresses entered into a log that would be sent to state police every 60 days, if a bill making its way through the state Legislature becomes law.

The proposal would apply to Sudafed and other over-the-counter medicines that contain key raw ingredients for methamphetamine. Customers would be limited to three packages and have to sign a log showing their name, address, how much medicine they bought and the date of the transaction.

If lawmakers adopt the bill, South Carolina would be following a track taken by other states, starting with Oklahoma in 2004, to combat the fast spread of a drug that can be made in home labs with household products. Taking down a single meth lab can cost thousands of dollars and eat up hours of law enforcement resources.

The pharmaceutical industry is responding by reformulating its cold medicines so they don't contain ingredients used in meth. Retailers, including Wal-Mart and Target, have agreed to voluntarily store some cold medicines behind the counter. The bill would require it.

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The House approved the bill earlier this month. The primary sponsor, state Rep. Joan Brady, R-Columbia, said she's trying to drum up support in the Senate.

Methamphetamine, also known as "crank" or "ice," is a highly addictive stimulant that can cause psychosis, stroke and cardiac arrhythmia. One of the main ingredients -- ephedrine or pseudoephedrine -- can be found in common cold, allergy and asthma medicines.

"People's lives are just being destroyed by this stuff," said state Rep. Lewis "Gene" Pinson, a Greenwood Republican who co-sponsored the bill. "Anything we can do to put a roadblock in, I'm all for."

North Carolina's law, similar to the one South Carolina is considering, went into effect Jan. 15. Five days later, a bust in Sampson County, N.C., involved a meth cook traveling to South Carolina to buy pills, according to Noelle Talley, a spokeswoman for North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper.

"In a best-case scenario, we'd like to see all states bordering North Carolina put all pseudoephedrine tablets behind pharmacy counters, because that's the solution that's proven to work," Cooper said in a written statement. Sgt. Jim Burris of the Greenville County Sheriff's Office said some dealers in South Carolina have already begun pooling their resources in a method known as "smurfing." Groups of them visit several pharmacies, buying two or three boxes of medicine at each, to bypass retailers' voluntary restrictions on cold medicine sales, he said.

It takes 60 milligrams, or about six boxes of medicine, to make an ounce of meth, Burris said. Experts say an ounce of meth goes for $1,000 to $3,000, depending on the purity and availability.

Bi-Lo grocery stores limit customers to two boxes of cold medicine per visit, said spokeswoman Joyce Smart. Registers automatically lock up when a third box is scanned, she said. Employees are trained to look for meth manufacturers, Smart said.

"We do business in six different states," she said. "South Carolina is actually the only state without a meth law at this point."

Residents were split on the bill. Lindsey Hayes, a barista at a downtown tea cafe, saw the potential to erode personal privacy -- the latest move in a disturbing trend, she said.

"With the way things are going -- the Bush administration and the NSA (National Security Agency) -- they know everything about us anyway," Hayes said.

Furman University chemistry major Matthew Isenhower said he would be willing to provide the information to fight the fast-growing scourge of meth.

"I wouldn't be doing anything (illegal) with it," he said. "I wouldn't have a problem saying, 'I've got a cold and I'm not going to be selling this to the local meth dealer.'"

Last year, the drug-maker Pfizer rolled out Sudafed PE, which uses pheylephrine instead of pseudoephedrine and is useless in meth production.

Elizabeth Assey, a spokeswoman for the Consumer Healthcare Products Association in Washington D.C., said the manufacturers' lobbying group doesn't have a position on laws that require customers to provide personal information to buy cold medicine.

But the group does oppose Oregon's approach, she said. Oregon requires a prescription for medicines that contain pseudoephedrine.

University of South Carolina medical ethics professor Donald Saunders said the state will have to strike a balance between personal privacy and the need to crack down on meth labs as it tools its legislation.

"If we're going to require this, there ought to be a reason," he said.

Brady said her bill would allow law enforcement officers to refer to retailers' logbooks as evidence after a bust. She expects it would have the biggest impact on dealers in rural areas, while saddling customers with only a minor inconvenience.

"It's not going to cause any more difficulty than turning around to hand somebody cigarettes or a lottery ticket," Brady said.

Under the bill in the Statehouse, customers would have to show government identification and sign the logbook to buy the medicine. Retailers would have to send the information to the state Law Enforcement Division every 60 days.

The bill, Brady said, is modeled after an Oklahoma law that put a giant dent in the number of meth labs law enforcement took down. Oklahoma has seen a 90 percent drop in labs, said Mark Woodward, a spokesman for the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Control.

"Last month, there were only 11 labs," he said. "Of those, I think only three of them were actually operating labs. We were averaging 100-120 labs before our law."

Burris said the sheriff's office has seized about 220 labs in the past five years, including 64 in 2004 and about 40 in 2005. The numbers fell last year because aggressive law enforcement has pushed dealers out of the county, he said. The office has investigators to crack down on meth, other drugs, prostitution and gambling, Burris said.

"We put a lot of effort with a lot of people in finding some of these labs and prosecuting some of these people," he said.

What the bill wouldn't address is the meth coming into the state from "superlabs" in Mexico and elsewhere. Burris said most of the meth in the county is from the superlabs.

Oklahoma still has a problem with Mexican meth, but local and state police are no longer inundated with local labs that can take as much as 12 hours to dismantle, Woodward said.