Bloomington, Ill. ? Showing ID isn’t just for smokes and beer anymore.

Starting today, cold and allergy sufferers in Illinois will need identification and they must be willing to sign a log before they can buy a popular decongestant that’s also used in the illegal manufacture of methamphetamine.

State police have seen a huge jump in the number of meth lab busts in recent years – from 24 in 1997 to nearly 1,000 each of the past three years – and the number of Illinois cases has risen to third in the nation.

The state tried pulling pseudoephedrine-based medications off open shelves and putting them behind the counter last year, but Illinois remained a magnet for meth makers because other state’s had even stiffer requirements, Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan said.

Oregon, meanwhile, started a registry for cold remedies containing pseudoephedrine and saw its methamphetamine lab discoveries dropped by more than half last year.

“Our hopes are that we will see similar numbers,” Madigan said.

She and others hope that by further limiting access to the drug found in nonprescription medications such as Sudafed, Tylenol Cold and Claritin D, will curb the growing problem.

As of October, 37 states, including Kansas, had some sort of restriction on the sales of pseudoephedrine, from requiring a prescription to simply limiting the number of packages purchased at one time, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Since then, Michigan has also restricted sales.