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Beyond its weight-loss and bodybuilding effects, ephedrine has other uses. It’s regulated as a legal drug by the FDA when sold in over-the-counter bronchodilators, so the dietary-supplement ban doesn’t prohibit its sale as a cheap, legal remedy for bronchitis or asthma. It worked for Tony, a 52-year-old without medical insurance who developed breathing problems after smoking for 21 years, who posted to the online newsgroup rec.drugs.smart last summer: "One day I was in a convenience store and I saw a display of Mini-Thins ephedrine HCL 25mg tablets for sale. I read on the package ‘helps breathing without drowsiness,’ and decided to try it. It worked. It still works. It is wonderful and I can breathe easily and I have avoided a $120 initial-visit doctor bill as well as expensive prescription medications."

Apparently, Tommy Thompson never got the word. When he appeared on CNN with anchor Carol Lin after the announcement of the ban, a caller asked him what he was going to do to help asthma sufferers, mentioning that ephedra is the only drug that worked for his asthma. Thompson’s response? "We haven’t got any scientific basis whatsoever that ephedra helps asthma patients. And we have looked at all of the — all of the conditions, all of the pronouncements, and we haven’t found anything," he said, apparently unaware that his own agency regulates the substance variously, depending on its intended use. "So we don’t think that ephedra helps you in your asthma."

But even anti-ephedrine crusaders like Barbara Michel, who organized the nonprofit organization HEAT (Halt Ephedrine Abuse Today) after the death of her son, a truck driver, was linked to ephedrine, realizes that the substance helps breathing. "As far as I’m concerned, all ephedra should be prescription only. But if that’s the only alternative, if there are no better, safer alternatives for over-the-counter asthma relief, I don’t want to take people’s asthma medication away from them. Especially with people who cannot afford to go and get a doctor."

EPHEDRINE IS a kissing cousin of methamphetamine — a/k/a meth, crank, speed, poor man’s coke, biker’s coffee — a detail Thompson didn’t mention that may shed light on one of the FDA’s subsidiary motives for taking ephedra-based dietary supplements off shelves. Both ephedrine and its synthetic counterpart, pseudoephedrine, the active ingredient in cold medicines like Sudafed, are necessary components in methamphetamine production. Although small-time meth cooks are rarely, if ever, caught extracting ephedrine alkaloids from herbal dietary supplements — "I have never seen it," says DEA spokesman Bill Grant. "The dosage is typically too low" — the effects of ephedrine and meth are similar enough that one anonymous meth-recipe writer at www.neonjoint.com encourages dealers to sell the lower-potency chemical as the real thing: "If you are selling it ... I would just make ephedrine and say it’s meth."

Obviously, the DEA isn’t ignorant of the connection between the two chemical compounds. To prevent meth-makers from buying entire cases of ephedrine, there are federal limits on how much a consumer can purchase at one time — less than nine grams of ephedrine per transaction, less than three grams per package sold. Sudafed now comes in blister packs instead of bottles, to make meth production more difficult. A few weeks ago, state officials in Oklahoma filed legislation to stop meth production at its source: under the proposed bill, pseudoephedrine-jacked cold medicine would be sold only at licensed pharmacies, and photo IDs and signatures would be required to purchase it.

In truth, it’s unlikely that the ephedra ban is intended to prevent desperate crank cooks from boiling up methamphetamine. It’s more likely that the government wants ephedrine out of the picture simply because it’s a pep pill. "Obviously, many people are using it for that reason," says author Jacob Sullum. "It’s very clear that what disturbs the FDA is the idea of using drugs for pleasure."

"It does help sometimes in the morning," admits Poskus. "When you’ve had that late night typing away at the computer, you have to be up for that seven-o’clock meeting and be coherent, it does help from time to time. I’m not going to lie about it."

The question of whether ephedra should be outlawed seems less important than the misleading way the government presented its edict. The FDA collected adverse-incident reports about ephedra throughout the 1990s. So why is it instituting a ban now? Certainly, Oriole Steve Bechler’s death catapulted the issue into the national spotlight. "The use of performance-enhancing drugs like steroids in baseball, football, and other sports is dangerous," proclaimed erstwhile baseball-team owner George W. Bush during his State of the Union address. "And it sends the wrong message — that there are shortcuts to accomplishment, and that performance is more important than character."

Although the president specifically indicted steroids — a performance enhancer not legally available, as ephedra will continue to be for the next month or so — it seems obvious that he was also talking about ephedrine. The Associated Press quoted Office of National Drug Control Policy director John Walters as saying, "The president has had a personal involvement with Major League Baseball, and he’s particularly concerned that it’s bad for players, it’s bad for the sport, it’s bad for young people, and he’s calling for them to fix it." If one thinks about the ephedra ban in the context of the Bush administration’s drug policy — which has included locking up Tommy Chong under the Operation Pipe Dreams initiative for financing his son’s drug-paraphernalia company, and calling for drug testing in schools — Thompson’s effort to persuade the public (during the press conference and later on both CNN and Fox News) that the ban’s timing was keyed to helping fat people seems downright disingenuous. Bathed in the warm patronizing glow of altruism, Thompson’s announcement was in truth yet another salvo in the Bush administration’s simple-minded war on drugs.

Will it help fat people? "The ban will probably discourage people who are the type of people I tend to get calls from," says Dr. Gruber. "People who decided to just pick [ephedrine] up at the nutrition store when they were getting vitamin C and thought, ‘Oh, I want to lose weight.’ And then they pick up a bottle and start taking it and start to have problems."

The ones who’ve been swallowing it regularly, though, are stocking up before it becomes unavailable. "I feel that people are going to start ordering more of this stuff than they need," says Poskus, who’s distributed the substance through his company’s Web site for years. "People who used to order a bottle a month are now ordering half a case."

What about athletes? "People who’re addicted to ephedra will figure out how to get it," says Gruber. "Bodybuilders have access to steroids and many, many things that are banned and illegal, so I’m quite certain that there will be ways for them to obtain it. And other athletes, of course, will figure out how to get it. Even with the ban, people will find a way to continue taking it."

Camille Dodero can be reached at cdodero[a]phx.com