Company officials said the move came as states have passed various laws to control spread of methamphetamine precursor chemicals. "It became really not possible for us to make sure people were not inadvertently breaking the law by selling in one state where it's legal to a state where it's not legal anymore," said eBay spokesperson Hani Durzy.

Durzy said that eBay had not seen large numbers of suspicious chemical sales, but drug-enforcement officials said that Internet auctions were becoming more popular with methamphetamine makers. "Anything that keeps precursors out of the hands of those who want to turn them into meth is a good thing," said Drug Enforcement Administration spokesman Bill Grante.

Some recent auctions on eBay included a lot of 1,000 30-milligram tablets of pseudoephedrine. The DEA has been working with eBay for the past six months to control such sales.

A number of states have recently passed laws requiring that retailers pull drugs containing pseudoephedrine and ephedrine from store shelves and only sell them from behind pharmacy counters.

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