Posted on 02/17/2013 6:41:36 AM PST by Kaslin
Sen. Dianne Feinstein began her war on allergy and cold sufferers in 2005. In an effort to prevent small-time dealers from buying allergy and cold drugs and cooking them into methamphetamine, she pushed through legislation requiring consumers to show identification before purchasing products with pseudoephedrine -- otherwise known as the good allergy drugs, known only to those who know enough to ask for them.
Now Feinstein wants to make you get a prescription from a doctor before you buy these drugs.
In 2005, I thought Feinstein's Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act wrongly punished law-abiding citizens by limiting their access to over-the-counter medications. A spokesman for Di-Fi told me the legislation would prompt the pharmaceutical industry to find "alternatives to pseudoephedrine."
The industry found those alternatives. They just don't work so well as the old stuff. Nonetheless, Feinstein, a committed drug warrior, thought the downside for allergy and cold sufferers was worth the trade-off.
Now she's at it again. The Government Accountability Office reported a decrease in meth lab incidents in Oregon and Mississippi after those states passed laws requiring purchasers to present a doctor's prescription.
Feinstein crowed, "It's time to redouble our efforts to prevent these products from falling into the wrong hands by expanding these common-sense laws to all 50 states."
That's right. You have to contact a doctor because Feinstein thinks her 2005 law didn't do enough.
The drug trade has shown itself to be crafty in maneuvering around drug laws. The 2005 law required a buyer to show a driver's license. Would-be manufacturers started "smurfing" -- sending recruits to multiple retailers to buy pills. Users started using the "shake and bake" method to produce small batches of meth in 2-liter plastic jugs.
The biggest beneficiaries of the Feinstein law, said Bill Piper of the anti-drug war Drug Policy Alliance, are Mexican drug cartels; Washington stomped on their competition. The Drug Enforcement Administration estimates that Mexico supplies as much as 80 percent of the methamphetamine in the United States.
Thus, a decline in meth lab incidents doesn't indicate a decline in methamphetamine use. According to a state report, Oregon's methamphetamine use "remains at a high level in the state," and 61 percent of Oregon law enforcement officers see methamphetamine as their area's greatest drug threat. California, Washington, Idaho and Nevada also experienced drops in meth lab incidents.
"We want to stop crime, but we don't want to force busy families to have to take time off work to see a doctor," sighed Elizabeth Funderburk of the Consumer Healthcare Products Association. Cold sufferers could call their doctors to get a prescription, and maybe they'd get one without much delay or expense. But because a prescription requirement won't hamper Mexican cartels, why stick it to law-abiding Americans?
I fondly remember when Nyquil actually worked—and helped me get much-needed sleep.
Yes, but if they turn these drugs into prescription drugs doesn’t that mean that health insurance will have to help pay for them?
I keep wondering if every socialist were ever to control our lives to their standards, would they then be satisfied? I doubt it.
I remember a few years ago, I was trying to buy some Claritin for my husband who has been told by his doctor to take one daily for his sinuses. I was pregnant and having a few things to think about besides remembering the precise date I had last bought him a pack, I got flagged and rudely treated by the Target employee at the pharmacy. It struck me that if I had come in and asked them for drugs to abort my baby, not only would they have been required to give them to me, that employee probably would have lost his job/license for treating me the same way. What a screwed up world...
The low info voter actually think these people are working for them.
Because the law-abiding are the easiest to control.
And yet requiring a simple I.D. to vote is outrageous?
This is the way all leftists attack problems of criminality and deviate behavior.
They blame the tool or product and punish the innocent rather than the guilty.
It is exactly the same technique Feinstein and other democrats are trying to use to control guns.
The asininity of federal and state restriction on OTC pseudoephedrine is just ridiculous. You would need to process several cases of these pills just to make a small amount of illicit drugs, and it would cost you ten times as much to do it that way.
So why not just prohibit the sale of several cases at a time?
Or even better, why not just not regulate something that needs no regulation, except for safety and effectiveness?
The dems in the TN State Legislature are trying to push this too. They tried before and lost, and I hope they lose again. I’ve been raising cain with my state rep. and senator, telling them to vote against this ridiculous idea.
It’s bad enough that I have to sign for a box of Sudafed. I’m darned if I’m going to pay for am office visit just to get a prescription. I haven’t been to a doctor since 2003.
I’m blessed with good health but do have allergies. Sudeafed relieves my sinus congestion when nose spray isn’t quite enough to do it.
This idea isn’t going to stop the meth-heads. They’ll find something else to use to make their poison.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.