Feed Store Workers Charged Under Drug Law

Three women who run a Lancaster feed store have been charged with failing to keep records of who bought chemicals that can be used to make methamphetamine, sheriff’s investigators said Thursday.

Dorothy Jean Manning, 66, Ramona Ann Beck, 61, and Armitta Mae Granicy, 59, were expected to be arraigned today on charges that they sold iodine crystals at Granicy’s Feed Store without asking buyers for identification.

A new state law requires merchants to record the names and vehicle information of people buying the crystals, which can be used to make the drug known as speed. The case marks the state’s first prosecution under the law, sheriff’s officials said.

Iodine crystals are used legally to treat hoof ailments. Sheriff’s Det. Tom Holeman said Granicy’s has sold 11,000 ounces of the crystals since last May--more than three times the amount sold at any of the three other Antelope Valley feed stores carrying the product.

Holeman said undercover agents targeted the store after alerting Granicy to the law with certified letters from state and local officials. He and other deputies personally warned the women that they would be arrested unless they started keeping records of every iodine crystal sale, Holeman said.

They were arrested on March 8 and spent four hours in jail.

“We’ve got ladies who say they are doing business the same way they’ve done for past 40 years,” said their attorney, Robert Sheahen. “[They] don’t have a clue what methamphetamine is. They wouldn’t know meth from methyl alcohol.”

If convicted, they could be sentenced to a year in jail.