Many of us look fondly upon the days when you could go to the drug or grocery store and pick up a decongestant while plugged up and just be done with it after handing over your cold-contaminated cash at the register. Now, in your foggy, miserable state, you have to find a pharmacist who will take down your license information before handing over the powerful stuff. Ugh, more people and details involved in the equation. Suddenly the transaction costs go up, and I know I’m more likely to say “F*ck it, I’ll keep sniffling.”
But at least I still have the choice to find immediate relief at a reasonable price if I’m willing to jump through the hoops. These hoops, which we were promised would reduce meth labs, shockingly, have had no impact other than inconveniencing consumers and getting grandmothers arrested. So what are law enforcement groups calling for as the next step in the drug war? Requiring a prescription for decongestants.
Lord, I wish I were kidding. The representative of a Missouri law enforcement group says we need to battle the big, bad “pharmaceutical companies that make more than a billion dollars a year from cold relief medicines containing pseudoephedrine.” Oddly enough, he also claims that cold relief pills are comparable to chocolate chip cookies. God help him if he tries to go after Tollhouse cookie makers. Mothers will send all of their sniffling, sneezing rugrats after him.
Our crazy neighbor, Oregon, already requires a prescription to purchase products containing pseudoephedrine. This is a particularly enlightening entry from Wikipedia on the current regulations:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoephedrine#United_States
This won’t clog up physician’s offices at all. That primary care shortage we have is about to get a lot worse.
I remember working in my orgo lab in my undergrad years. The list of stuff we made and had access to would scare the crap out of Jim Beilsmith, eastern director of the Missouri Narcotic Officers Association.
Hey Jim, when are you coming after my organic chemistry book?
The stupidest part is that despite all that, people still make just as much methamphetamine, and just as always, something like 3/4 of the US supply (according to the DEA) comes from Mexico anyway.
It is plainly more important for politicians to be seen to be doing something than anything else.
Just more crap from the high population areas of the state.
Just today, the feds arrested about 300 members of the “La Familia” Mexican drug cartel all across the nation. The specialty of this cartel is reportedly methamphetamine, which they smuggle across the border by the ton.
Somehow, I really doubt that making it a hassle for us to buy cold remedies at Walmart would ever make it a hassle for “La Familia” to keep cooking up their methamphetamine in Mexico. It’s just as laughable as the prospect of a renewed ban on semi-automatic rifles to keep the Mexican drug gangsters from getting their military ordnance.
What is it with Missouri lately?
It’s the large urban areas of the state trying to solve problems with more big government. God forbid arresting more drug dealers, lets just make it harder on everyone else.