Leaves Me Cold
Woke up one morning after a long night singing "Old McDonald" sniffling, sneezing, and the rest, so Mrs. 3000 saw our Good Family Pharmacist for relief . . . and stumbled smack into the hot zone .
No kidding, meth cookers and users' kids and neighbors drew some short straws living within a crow's mile of anyone ingesting anything maybe made of nail polish and drain cleaner that can kill or poison all around. For the bystanders, who wouldn't want to do more?
Putting my NyQuil behind the counter, yeah, that's more, but it's not enough and too much--except in our legislatures, of course, where "something" as always must be done.
According to the Palm Beach Post article, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement says "much of South Florida's illegal meth is smuggled from sprawling labs in Mexico, not brewed from a retailer's shelves of cold remedies."
And according to the San Diego Union-Tribune, "Thirty-six of the 416 children [in San Diego County] rescued from drug homes between May 2004 and May 2005 had meth in their system, according to county figures released in June. Most of the adults in those homes were chronic meth abusers," not cookers.
Anyway, there's now pseudoephedrine-free NyQuil (and my cold's gone). My thanks to Vicks for doing "something."
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2 comments:
I've been real curious to see how this plays out. If the substitute holds, will it mean, as the article points out, that the trade rout simply runs through Mexico? Or, will the legal drug manufacturers just quit producing sudaphed world-wide with the meth ingredients once they lose the US market. If so, how long will it take for someone to just produce the stuff on their own? Also, if the stuff is so bad that I have to show ID to my pharmacist, why not just ban it without a prescription? As it stands, it’s a major pain. When I went to buy supplies for the fam, I had to make two trips on different days. By the time I bought for the wife, the kid both in liquid and solid forms, I exceeded my quota. Personally, I'm against the ban. Think it’s stupid. But I do need someone to explain why gun restrictions (cooling off periods, Brady Bill, etc, which I also oppose) are bad because they only hurt law-abiding citizens, and criminals can always get guns, but restrictions on sudaphed make great sense. To me, it’s the same argument, but since it deals with the “war on drugs” it doesn’t have to make sense, as long as it makes something.
And, as the Post report points out, the pseudoephedrine-free products could become a new source for the cookers (which, God and Paul Tagliabue willing, is exactly what we'll call the Saints when they move to L.A.).
Someone online was whining about the ineffectiveness of pseudoephedrine-free Sudafed, so the possibility that manufacturers will phase pseudoephedrine out worldwide is a story we'll watch closely here on Hydrablog.
Logical though prescription-only at this point would be, I guess that'd be too tough to make Phizer, etc. swallow, since prescriptions mean doctor visits that fewer people would make, meaning fewer cold-relief customers. And when pharmaceutical companies are removing the stuff anyway as retailers voluntarily are putting it behind the counter, it becomes a moot point worth mentioning only for the farce to which this all amounts.
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