Diane Avera, a 45-year-old grandmother from Meridian, Mississippi, faces a year in prison in Alabama for the supposed crime of buying a box of Sudafed in preparation for a scuba expedition. She was arrested in Demopolis, Alabama after a clerk at the local CVS pharmacy, acting as an informant, tipped off the police about her son’s purchase of Sudafed D.
Avera, who had no previous arrests, has a teenage son who is an admitted drug user with a Methadone prescription. On July 29, 2010, Avera, her husband, and several other friends were preparing for a scuba diving trip to Panama City, Florida. Her scuba instructor, Bob Sample, advised Avera to buy Sudafed or a similar decongestant to help with an ear condition. In Mississippi, Sudafed can only be obtained by prescription. A clerk at the Meridian Walmart suggested that Avera go across the state line to Alabama, where the medicine can be purchased over the counter.
In the company of her teenage son, his girlfriend, and three small children (two grandsons and the girlfriend’s nephew), Avera made two stops – the first to the CVS pharmacy, where he son and his girlfriend each bought a box of Sudafed, and then to Walmart, where she bought another. She wasn’t aware that in Demopolis the local police “were conducting a sting operation,” reports the Jackson, Mississippi Clarion-Ledger. “Pharmacists there informed police when anyone from Mississippi bought medicine containing pseudoephedrine.”
When Avera pulled out of the Walmart parking lot, a police officer quickly intercepted her, continues the Clarion-Ledger:
After leaving Walmart, she said police officer Sgt. Tim Soronen pulled her over and asked, “What brings you to Demopolis?”
“I came over to buy some Sudafed for our scuba diving trip this weekend since we cannot buy it in Meridian anymore,” she said she told him.
She said the officer asked if she knew it was against the law to cross the state line and buy Sudafed. (It is against the law in Mississippi to bring back pseudoephedrine products from another state, but Alabama law permits those from other states to buy the medicine as long as they sign.)
“No, sir, I did not know,” she said she replied.
“I need you to step out of the car,” he said.
“For what? I swear I didn’t know. What did I do?” she said she asked.
“You came to Demopolis to buy some Sudafed. Step to the back of the truck,” she said he told her
A search of the vehicle turned up her son’s drug paraphernalia, which he admitted was his. The officer placed Avera under arrest and placed her terrified grandsons, and the girlfriend’s equally traumatized nephew in the squad car. With the children crying in the background, Sgt. Soronen – using the prospect of abducting the children as leverage – asked Avera if she wanted the Alabama State Department of Human Resources “to pick up these kids.”
Horrified by the prospect, Avera said she would admit to anything as long as her son would be able to take care of “my babies.”
“He told her she had to confess all the Sudafed was hers, thereby putting her over the legal limit in Alabama, she said,” reports the Clarion-Ledger.
After being arrested and left shackled to a metal chair for 17 hours, Avera signed a confession in which she stated that “I did not know it was against the law to cross the state line to purchase Sudafed. I promise to never buy another box in my life.”
“They told me to add that I was making crystal meth so I did,” she told the newspaper.
After a three-day trial, Avera was found guilty of intent to manufacture crystal meth. Despite the fact that several drug tests came back clean, Marengo County District Attorney Greg Griggers claims that Avera confessed that she and her daughter had been using meth for two years.
“That’s a lie,” Avera insists.
Griggers also dismissed the drug tests, claiming that Avera had somehow “diluted” the test samples – a complete uncorroborated charge not confirmed by the clinicians who examined the samples.
Avera, who has appealed her conviction but faces another ten months behind bars if she loses, is described by her husband Keith as a “prisoner of the drug war going on inside America…. When common household medications and disinfectants are now illegal to possess, I believe we have gone overboard in the drug laws.”
Embellishing on that point, it should also be said that when your local pharmacy clerk is a police informant ready to bust you for buying an over-the-counter cold medicine, it should be obvious that we live in a reich or a soyuz, rather than a constitutional republic. Avera’s case is particularly infuriating – not just because of the way the cop used the grandchildren as hostages, but also because the snitch that got the grandmother in trouble works for a large corporation that was spared federal charges for its admitted role in providing large amounts of pseudoephedrine to meth manufacturers.
Since 2005, over-the-counter cold remedies containing pseudoephedrine have been treated as a controlled substance. Jeffrey Tucker of the Ludwig von Mises Institute points out that “Before 2005, you could by as many Sudafed packages as you did Big Mac sandwiches…. Now, your 30-allotment is nine grams,” which probably isn’t enough during cold and flu season. And the government-approved replacement is little better than a placebo.
Pharmacies are required to limit customers to no more than 3.6 grams a day, supposedly to make it more difficult for would-be traffickers to obtain the raw ingredients of methamphetamine.
Predictably, this simply created a flourishing black market for pseudoephedrine. Cash-strapped people are eagerly acting as “smurfers” – that is, proxy buyers who buy huge quantities of Sudafed and other cold remedies on behalf of meth dealers.
The crack-down on meth has resulted in deeply entrenched corruption and perversions of due process. About a year ago, CVS, whose corporate leadership admits that it knowingly allowed extensive purchases of pseudoephedrine by “smurfers,” was spared criminal charges and given a large fine that was passed along to customers. As Avera’s case illustrates, the pharmacy chain is also eager to aid in the prosecution of small-time defendants who purchase excessive amounts of cold medicine. Some of them face years in prison – where meth and other illegal drugs are readily available. This is particularly true in Alabama.
In early 2009, reported the Opelika-Auburn News, twenty-five people in that region of Alabama were arrested on “meth-related charges.” Of those arrested, only two were charged with either possessing or manufacturing methamphetamine; the others were arrested for what was described as “unlawful possession of a precursor” – that is, “purchasing over the legal amount of pseudoephedrine.”
Institutionalized injustice is a defining trait of the Regime’s crackdown on methamphetamines and “precursors.” As Republic magazine recently reported, Shannon Jones, a former judge in Tennessee’s Crockett County who pleaded guilty last fall to federal meth charges, was sentenced to six months in prison, three years of supervised release, a $100 assessment fee, and $3,300 in restitution to the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Jones, an admitted meth addict and manufacturer, faced criminal charges that could have resulted in more than thirty years in prison – but was given the leniency that the system ruling us lavishes only on the powerful and well-connected. As a mere Mundane, Diane Avera – whose only “crime” was to buy a legal amount of an over-the-counter palliative – can expect no similar mercy.
February 6th, 2012 at 10:21 am
Alabama has a major meth problem. You can’t buy Sudafed off the shelf any longer. I guess when my sinuses kick in this year I will just have to tough it out as I would hate to go through what this poor lady is going through.
February 8th, 2012 at 6:52 am
It is actions like this that is causing the public to distrust law enforcement. As a 30 plus year veteran and an administrator of 20 chief for 5, I am very concerned aboutthe angst in the public.
I personally suffered from my local PD when they blew the investigation into my father who was missing and was later found murdered (trial in April). My own former agency thought he was just old and got lost even though all evidence pointed to an endangered missing.
We are suffering from a lack of competence in law enforcement today. This type of sting is wrong. Whether there was a scuba trip planned should be easily verified by rental contracts, hotel reservations, etc.
February 9th, 2012 at 8:35 am
When you ask law enforcement officers to do things like this then what you are basically doing is eliminating anyone who is good and decent, with a functioning conscience and brain from ever performing the job. The consequences of this are as bad as the laws themselves.
This is why policemen are held in such contempt even by law abiding citizens. They have sold their souls for a paycheck. This story also shows why you should never talk to the police under any circumstances. Just tell them you want a lawyer and shut up. You can bet the officers who extorted this confession will never be punished. Indeed they will be encouraged.
Personally, I could not care less if someone wants to do meth. We should subsidize the stuff so that the people who want it don’t feel the need to use violence to get it and don’t go around stealing. If they are dead set on offing themselves then let them do it more expeditiously and with less side effects for the rest of us. Just label the stuff as poison and let them have as much of it as they want. Maybe you could have them sign something stating that they know meth will kill them to protect the seller from liability etc… but whatever the process is it has to be easier than cooking it or buying it on the streets to discourage an underground from developing.
On the bright side though, when Obamacare is in full effect and the government has a copy of everyone’s health records and decides which treatments we can and cannot have we will need a black market for pharmaceuticals so the practice we are getting skirting these laws may pay off in the end.
Short of a bloody revolution things will not get better so we suffer until the point is reached where killing each other seems to be the milder alternative.
Wonderful ruling class and government we have these days ain’t it?
February 9th, 2012 at 1:47 pm
Man, she should have just bought some Meth. Would have cleared her sinuses right up!
April 21st, 2012 at 3:12 pm
It is a travesty that the police force is destroying lives and enhancing the probability that the people they wrongfully accuse and convict are to feel such a hatred and distrust for the law enforcement in places such as Marengo County. My heart goes out to Diane Avera. This poor grandmother did not stand a chance to get a fair trial. From what I understand, Marengo County and its law enforcement is corrupt and needs to have someone go in and investigate their operations. It seems if someone has money and a name in that system, then they can get away with breaking the laws. Let a black person or a person of no means come into contact with them and these people stand no chance of being treated fairly. I suggest that people do not move to this county or support businesses there.
April 22nd, 2012 at 12:28 pm
Like someone mentioned, this poor woman is the innocent victim of this failed “war on drugs”. It’s no wonder that many people now do not trust law enforcement and there will be many more.
If that scum bucket officer had used simple common sense this would have never happened, but they don’t use it and I am beginning to wonder if many officers these days even have it period.
These gung ho officers have one priority focus and that is making drug arrests and getting convictions and they don’t care whose lives they destroy in the process. They break the law themselves to enforce it. Their morally wrong actions continue to happen with absolutely no accountability for these actions. They do it, get away with it and then are praised for it.
The article mentioned that the officer had her sign a paper saying that she was involved in making meth. WTF? That in itself proves that he was not after the truth, he was after an arrest at whatever cost. He used the poor grandchildren as his ace in the hole to get her to admit to anything to make sure the well being of those children was maintained. That is wrong and no one anywhere can tell me it isn’t without lying about it.
I will say this and leave it at that. There is no agency anywhere that will ever be stronger than the united citizens of this country. The people that don’t have a problem with this type of law enforcement misconduct all have their head in the sand and one day will realize that it is too late to do anything about it now.
April 23rd, 2012 at 12:17 pm
I have one more thing to say concerning this matter. I have never been a big fan of CVS Pharmacies but now they have lost my business forever. What they did was just as wrong as the way that officer handled the situation. Jumping to conclusions and acting on assumptions alone is a dangerous way to go about it.
One reason that this caught my attention is that myself, along with my family all are sinus sufferers. We didn’t ask for that burden but we got it anyway. I have been looked at and treated somewhat like a criminal when I have purchased these medications and none were more apparent than CVS. I didn’t like it then and I sure don’t like it now after reading about this poor ladies ordeal and it all came about simply because the CVS employee was trying to play hero and save the day instead of minding their own business and providing medication to a needy customer.
I realize that my own personal boycott of CVS Pharmacies means nothing to them and that’s fine but if more people were to do the same then that would make a difference and hopefully force a change in their policies of handling things in this manner.
Hey CVS, if you don’t feel differently after reading this article than you felt before then you DO NOT deserve to have any customers grace the doors of any of your stores, anywhere. You are reading the comment from one former customer who has bought his last anything from you.