I, like many people, suffer from allergies this time of the year. Of all the allergy medications I’ve taken the only one that has demonstrated any effectiveness is Zyrtec-D. When you’re feeling like death warmed over the last thing you want to do is go through the process of buying Zyrtec-D.
Zyrtec-D is one of those wonderful drugs that contains pseudoephedrine. Pseudoephedrine, in addition to being effective medication, happens to be an ingredient used to make meth. Because the state is determined to fight the unwinnable drug war any medication containing pseudoephedrine is now locked behind the pharmacy counter. In order to buy it you must go up to the counter, which often involves standing in line for some time, and ask for it specifically. Before the pharmacist can give you the medication you must show your ID so it can be logged and sign a waiver that is nothing more than a threat to fine you $250,000 and/or lock you in a cage if you don’t use the medication in a state approved manner. After submitting yourself to that monkey dance you will get a box of 12 measly pills, which means you will have to repeat the entire process in 12 days unless your symptoms vanish. And before you get the crazy idea of heading to another pharmacy to get another box of allergy medication be warned that doing so is against the law. That’s why your ID was logged, after all.
I’m not that old but I still remember a time when I could just walk into the pharmacy, grab several boxes of Zyrtec-D, and be set for the entire allergy season. It was a good time when I wasn’t being punished for “crimes” (quotes used because making meth doesn’t have a victim and is therefore not actually a crime) committed by other people (gotta love the Freest Goddamn Country on Earth’s® collective punishment system).
This entire process really makes me consider buying meth, which is readily available, and converting it back to pseudoephedrine. That would be a lot easier than going through this monkey dance every 12 days.
At times I experience a sense of unreality: I surely can’t be living in a country where buying cold medicine is a felony. A reasonably alert five year-old should be able to reason out why the drug war doesn’t and will never work. This nation’s own experience with alcohol prohibition provides a practical slap in the face for anyone too dim to reason. Yet it goes on. What are we lacking, supposed “adults”, that makes us cling to this madness?
Of course I know the answer: people are gullible and want to believe that leaders are sincere. And the drug war IS a success, from the standpoint of the many who are kept employed by it.
I hope I live to see the day this wretched, festering rot of a law is flushed down the toilet. There are many things wrong with America today, but drug war, and the attitude behind it, head my list.
Of all the erroneous laws on the books I’m fairly convinced that those revolving around the drug war are the worst when it comes to violating rights. When a cop can steal your property by simply claiming they believe it’s part of a drug crime the entire idea of rights goes out the window.