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• Store these products out of reach and out of sight of the public.

• Refer suspicious sales to the pharmacist in charge. Report any details to police.

• Reduce stock of pseudoephedrine/antihistamine to a week's supply.

• No more than two packets for each customer.

• Product manufacturers to stop incentives to pharmacists to buy big amounts.

In May 2005, four NSW pharmacists were charged with breaching the Poisons and Therapeutic Goods Regulation, which echoed and stiffened the Pharmacy Guild guidelines. The pharmacists, in Beecroft, Waterloo, Epping and Ryde, had been the subject of police surveillance since 2004 for selling up to ten packets of the tablets at a time. They pleaded guilty to the charges. They were the first pharmacists to face police sanctions and deregistration, but as Detective Inspector Paul Willingham of the NSW drug squad said, ‘We've got to the stage where we thought we really need to make an example of some of these pharmacists to spread a message across the industry.'

An even clearer message was initiated by the Pharmacy Guild's Queensland branch, of which Tim Logan became president. Project STOP was developed through 2005 by Shaun Singleton, the manager of innovation and development for the Queensland branch.

‘By 2005 there had been a lot of bad publicity about pseudoephedrine,' Singleton says. ‘Pharmacists were contacting us about it being abused. We conducted an education program, doing seminars and putting out written information to pharmacists across the state about potential misuses of pseudoephedrine.

‘Pharmacists had been contacting police by fax or phone when someone suspicious came in asking for pseudoephedrine, but were becoming frustrated by the lack of response. Police would say they'd get back to them, but wouldn't.

‘Then there'd be stories on
A Current Affair
or similar programs about pseudoephedrine, and they were blaming pharmacists for either being inattentive or having the wool pulled over their eyes.

‘So pharmacists were solving the problem by either not stocking pseudoephedrine medications at all—20 per cent were not stocking it, which was bad news for genuine sinus pain sufferers—or in other cases they were refusing to make value judgments about people coming into pharmacies. They thought it wasn't fair to be judging people on their appearance to say whether or not this person was a pseud runner.'

The first version of Project STOP was launched in October 2005. It comprised an internet database that pharmacists could log into and share purchase information, with a search facility.

Queensland pharmacists would ask for the purchaser's ID, then enter it into their database. Instantly, all other pharmacists in the state had access to that customer's details and the time of purchase. Of course, the customer could get around this by presenting fake ID. But such are the economics of converting Sudafed to ice, the pseud runner would need dozens, or hundreds, of false IDs to avoid popping up on the pharmacists' red-flag list.

Simultaneously, federal laws came in to tighten sales.

‘In 2005, packs of 60 to 90 tablets were moved to Schedule IV—prescription-only medicine,' Tim Logan says. ‘In January 2006, pseudoephedrine packs of 12 tablets were changed from Schedule II (which can only be sold while a pharmacist is available, that is, not in supermarkets) to Schedule III (the pharmacist must be involved in the sale). You can't put all pseudoephedrine onto Schedule IV—the symptoms are too common, and it would be too great a load on the federal government funding.'

Federal laws also threw new restrictions on the legal importation of pseudoephedrine-containing medications. Some, such as Dr Bill Kingswell, the head of the Queensland government's Gold Coast mental health unit, said laws should go further and ban pseudoephedrine outright. ‘It's still profitable for a person to drive from chemist to chemist buying pseudoephedrine,' Dr Kingswell said in 2006. ‘There is a reasonable body of evidence that if you ban pseudoephedrine you decimate the methamphetamine market.' By 2007, the federal parliamentary secretary for health, Christopher Pyne, echoed Kingswell's call for a ban on all pseudoephedrine products. The idea was opposed by some unlikely bedfellows: the Pharmacy Guild and the NSW Business Chamber said a ban on pseudoephedrine would increase the number of days lost nationally to sickness, and Dr Alex Wodak criticised Pyne's call as ‘gesture politics' with ‘a huge economic cost'.

Project STOP, which was a world first, had immediate benefits for Queensland. According to the Australian Crime Commission, while clandestine lab seizures rose in all other states from 2005 to 2007, they dropped by 23 per cent in Queensland. Ram-raids of pharmacies virtually ceased.

The benefit for pharmacists was twofold—they could now sell what Singleton calls ‘the ultimate weapon against common sinus pain' without having to guess whether the purchaser was going to misuse it, and they could avoid harassment.

‘It's been tremendous in my pharmacy,' Logan says. ‘It's made our work environment much safer. In my experience, if pseud runners realise they can't buy it, they just give up and go away.'

In mid-2007, the federal government funded a national rollout for Project STOP, and it was becoming the model for pseudoephedrine control in several US states.

The irony, says Tim Logan, is that Project STOP uses the same communications technology that gave crystal meth manufacturing its great leg-up a decade ago. ‘Ice really arrived with the start of the internet, by giving people access to recipes. Now, however, it's the internet that is helping us to stop it spreading.'

No fightback against a problem of this scale can have instantaneous results, however. Project STOP arrived too late to save Banjo Band.

By early 2004, New Zealander Darren Jason Blackburn's relationship with his older ‘mentor' and drinking buddy, Graham ‘Banjo' Band, had declined into its terminal phase. Blackburn had had a terrible life, as an unmedicated schizophrenic, an unemployable alcoholic, a failed husband and an ice user, yet Band was always there for him, ready to offer him accommodation or a meal. But primarily Band was there to drink with him.

Since 2001, Blackburn and his girlfriend, Lyn Henry, had been living on and off with Band. Sometimes they'd have a fight and the couple would move out. Band was mainly a drinker, while Blackburn was now dabbling in ecstasy, heroin, Rohypnol, Valium and crystal meth as well as his staples of cheap wine and cannabis.

According to accounts given by Blackburn and Henry at the subsequent trial, at one point they stayed with Band for a year, sleeping on the living room floor while Banjo occupied the single bedroom of his public housing flat at 127 Gordon Street, Footscray. Every night, Band and Blackburn would binge, with the younger man frequently passing out on the floor.

While they were all living in the flat, Henry fell pregnant. She and Blackburn went out to celebrate. As usual, Blackburn drank too much, and when they returned to the flat he fell unconscious on the couch. While Blackburn slept, Graham Band forced himself onto Henry and raped her. Upset and terrified, she didn't tell Blackburn until two weeks later, after Band had tried to rape her again.

When she told Blackburn, he exploded, smashing Band, who was then 62 years old. There followed—born from desperation and the raging illogic of their lives—a kind of reconciliation, and the couple remained in Band's flat until Henry was five months pregnant. Then the couple moved to Western Lodge, just up Gordon Street, for two and a half months. Shortly before Henry was due to deliver, she and Blackburn moved to a unit in Somerset Drive, Sunshine. It was there that Blackburn's third child, Summa, was born.

Things were finally looking up for Darren Blackburn. He was out of Banjo's flat. He now had a job as a sheet metal worker at an air-conditioning company. Maybe he could break out of the cycle that had had a grip on him since his childhood.

But he never slowed his drinking, and he was now fully into heroin, ice and other drugs. By early 2004 his relationship with Henry finally broke down. He was dangerous to Lyn and a poor father to Summa.

When he moved out, Blackburn went where he always went: back to his ‘uncle', Banjo Band. He slept either on Band's floor or in another flat in the same housing commission block, occupied by a tenant named David Armstrong. Band also had a nephew, Tasman ‘Taz' O'Connor, who stayed with either Band or Armstrong. One of O'Connor's most prized possessions was a replica samurai sword.

On 31 January, Blackburn was drinking with O'Connor. He told him about Band having raped Lyn Henry. They worked themselves up into a revenge fantasy and went to confront Band in his unit, where they gave him a solid thrashing. The 62-year-old ended up with bruises, lumps and cuts to the front and back of his head, and went to Western General Hospital for medical attention.

Whatever his other sins, Band was no squealer. In the hospital, he was interviewed by Victorian police constables Rooney and Gardiner.

After Band said he had been attacked from behind and hadn't seen who hit him, Constable Rooney asked: ‘Are you telling us everything, Graham? Something seems to be missing.'

‘I'm telling you all I know,' Band said.

Constable Gardiner said: ‘Graham, I think you might know who assaulted you. Is that the case?'

‘No.'

‘Did anyone else come out of the flats when it happened?'

‘No, I don't squeal,' Band said. ‘I've been hit heaps.'

‘Did you call out or yell when you got hit?' Rooney asked.

‘No.'

‘Graham,' Rooney said, ‘if you're worried or someone is intimidating you, you can tell us, we can help you.'

‘I don't know,' Band rasped. ‘I told you.'

‘I think your nephew [O'Connor] did this to you,' Rooney said. ‘Is that the case?'

‘You're wrong, mate.'

Meanwhile, Blackburn had some more to drink in Armstrong's flat that afternoon. Lyn Henry showed up, and Blackburn told her that he and Taz O'Connor had beaten up Band. Blackburn slept that night in Armstrong's flat, and the next morning went to a nearby pub, the Albert Hotel, to start drinking. Late in the morning he bought three takeaway bottles of beer and carried them back to Gordon Street.

O'Connor, who had spent the night in Band's flat, met Blackburn for another drink. It seemed that the two younger men weren't satisfied with merely having bashed Band the day before. Around lunchtime, Blackburn and O'Connor went to Band's flat, wishing to return to the matter of the rapes. All he wanted, Blackburn said, was for Band to go with him to Henry and apologise to her.

‘Fuck the bitch,' Band said.

Those might have been Graham Band's last coherent words. His defiance set off Blackburn, who started punching the old man, knocking him to the floor. Blackburn claims that O'Connor was also present, and also hit Band, but O'Connor denied this, saying he was outside the flat throughout the killing. Band was struck repeatedly with the samurai sword.

‘Then,' Blackburn would later tell police, ‘he was just completely fucked and rooted. So I picked him up and threw him on his bed. He was choking on . . . on his blood and that, and gasping.'

In the mayhem that followed—blood pouring out of Band's mouth as he gurgled for help—Blackburn, still enraged, said he was ‘sick of fucking listening to him . . . his choking and shit on his—whatever he's choking on. His gasping was just—the noise was just unreal.'

Maddened by the sound, Blackburn picked up a pillow and put it over Band's face. He said he had no intention of killing Band, ‘just shutting him up'. Band didn't struggle, and passed out.

A short time later, O'Connor came into the bedroom and checked Band's pulse. The old man was dead. O'Connor and Blackburn fled to Armstrong's unit and called Lyn Henry in a panic, asking her to come over. Eventually someone called 000, but when the fire brigade and ambulance officers arrived, Band was beyond saving.

He had been killed by one of seven separate stab wounds penetrating his chest and heart. There was blood spattered throughout his flat, and a bloody mark on the ceiling from where the samurai sword had been dragged across it.

In the following two and a half years, Blackburn would plead guilty to murder, then withdraw that plea. He was kept in jail awaiting trial while Tasman O'Connor received a not guilty verdict. O'Connor denied having even been in the flat when Band was murdered. The Crown had relied on David Armstrong as a witness, but Armstrong proved less than reliable. Finally, in 2006, Blackburn pleaded guilty to manslaughter.

At his sentencing hearing, a battery of psychiatrists gave evidence on Darren Blackburn's mental impairments. IQ tests placed him in the bottom 12 per cent of the population. His paranoid schizophrenia was real, and could be treated with medication. His consumption of drugs and alcohol contributed to his impairment, and his use of ice in particular took away his ability to control his impulses. He was profoundly depressed, telling a medical examiner that he did not like reality because ‘it's depressing . . . I don't want to be here, there's nothing for me . . . the world seems fucked, there's no reason I should be here.' His response to depression had always been to do the thing that would make him feel better, then worse. By the time of Band's death, that circular routine involved ice.

The judges of the Victorian Supreme Court took into account Blackburn's state of mind, but decided that he was still able to tell the difference between right and wrong when he attacked Band. Moreover, the court regarded him as a danger to the community. It sentenced him to nine years in jail, with a non-parole period of six years.