U.S. retailers are lobbying for a standard U.S. law, as they face pressure to limit access to over-the-counter cold and allergy medicines with ingredients used to make the illegal drug methamphetamine, industry watchers said on Thursday.

Supermarkets, convenience stores and drugstores have become a target of a growing number of state legislatures seeking to keep commonly used drugs from ending up in illicit meth-making home labs.

Methamphetamine - known by street names including “crank” or “ice” - can be homemade from cough and cold drugs that contain pseudoephedrine, like the popular Sudafed.

The drug is considered addictive and can have many long-lasting negative health effects including depression, brain damage, and mouth, tooth or nose problems as the drug can be snorted or smoked.

“We prefer to see a national law passed that’s uniform,” said Rich Savner, a spokesman for New Jersey-based regional grocer Pathmark Stores Inc., which also operates pharmacies inside its food stores.

“We’re hoping the federal government will pass some kind of legislation which is sort of an umbrella. I’m not sure if it would preempt local laws, but that would be the objective,” he told.

Mary Ann Wagner, vice president of pharmacy and regulatory affairs at the National Association of Chain Drug Stores, said a “workable” anti-meth approach would help relieve the strain that a myriad state-by-state laws is putting on pharmacies and pharmacists.

“For a company which has a national operation and is trying to operate stores in a lot of states, it’s becoming increasingly complex to comply with the varying rules, regulations and laws,” she said in an interview.

She added that “sometimes, even cities, towns and counties have ordinances above and beyond what the state (required).”

The growing complexity of anti-methamphetamine laws from individual states on Monday forced Target Corp., the No. 2 U.S. discounter behind Wal-Mart Stores Inc., to voluntarily decide to put all products with pseudoephedrine behind pharmacy counters.

Target also said that it would no longer sell items containing the ingredient at stores that do not have pharmacies. Industry experts said this could hurt small retailers that cannot afford to stop selling widely used drugs like cold medicines.

States leading the anti-meth fray include Kansas, Missouri, Kentucky and Oklahoma, which was one of the first states to introduce a clampdown on pseudoephedrine purchases and already credits the restrictions with cutting illegal meth production.

Meth use has been soaring in popularity in recent years, in part because it is easy and cheap to make, even at the back of a car’s trunk.