I, Too, Have Wondered This While In The Throes Of My Current Head Cold

The diarists over at RedState have pointed out that Dianne Feinstein Hates You And Everyone You Care About, or, in other words, The Federal Law Making Pseudoephedrine An OTC Drug Is Cosmically Stupid.
To wit:

I don’t know what I did to make Dianne Feinstein hate me, but she really does.
That’s the only legitimate reason I can come up with for her law against the normal sale of pseodoephedrine, the best decongestant on the market, attached (of course) as an amendment to the Patriot Act. Thanks to Feinstein’s amendment, co-sponsored by now ex-Senator Jim Talent, you can’t get any sinus medication from the supermarket shelf that contains any medicine the pharmaceutical industry has discovered since the 1970s. In other words, medicine that actually works.
[…]
So ultimately, all you’ve done, Dianne Feinstein, is add another hassle to the life of every sick adult who doesn’t get their meds from the Senate pharmacy, while curbing the local meth makers’ craft for the 15 minutes it takes for them to get that kid their brother knows at Kinkos to laminate an ID. Because if you can get your sinus medication off the shelf, the terrorists will win.

Thanks, DiFi. Thanks, ex-Senator Talent. Thanks for making it impossible for me to buy enough NyQuil, Alka Seltzer Cold & Sinus and Sudafed at one time in order to lick a stupid cold. You’d both be on my Groining List, if only my head wasn’t so congested as to make such physical exertion a near-impossibility.
Jerks.

9 Comments

I know the feeling. I’ve had head congestion for five days now and just discovered that the same Robitussin that cured me 6 months ago is now a “new forumla” with Phenylephrine HCI instead of Pseudoephedrine.
Now I need to go back to the pharmacy and find something from behind the counter then waste 10 minutes signing away my life and the life of my future kids just so that I can get a drug that works.
Agreed. What a senseless and useless law.

Actually pseudoephedrine products are quite available. Certainly at any CVS. Next to the Phenylephedrine HCl you will find an array of pictures of the products take one of these slips to the counter, they log your name and the purchase and off you go.

@ARBaboon:
Perhaps I wasn’t making myself clear. I am fully aware of how to obtain pseudoephedrine, what I am unable to understand is why I have to present more identification to buy bleedin’ cold medicine than I have to in order to vote in a federal election.
Stupid, lousy government.

Maybe this works differently in other states but today just because of this post I decided to buy Sudofed (the real kind). I was at the pharmacy for a total of 7 minutes I purchased Guiaphenisen (sp?), Sudofed 24 hour, nursing mommy drinks (Ensure vanilla) and family planning hardware. Even though the card said I would need to go to the to pharmacist, he said to just go to front to pay and present my drivers license. There was a beep when he scanned the Sudofed box and I handed over my license. He typed it in and I payed. As for whether I think this is effective for preventing meth producers, I am waiting for the statistics to come in. My guess is that there will be evolution as opposed to prevention.

ARBaboon:
Based on your poor spelling, I’m guessing you’re a juvenile and have no clue as to what the hell you’re talking about.

Ryan Duff: I will presume since your response had no substance that you simply have nothing substantive to say on the matter. Perhaps you felt too challenged by the fact that I did an empirical study (sure sample size 1 but it is more than nothing). The spelling was a product of my degree of consciousness at the time. I had just finished putting my son back to sleep and lifting my dying father off the toilet. I’m sorry that I could not be 100% for you. By the way if I was a juvenile trolling I probably would have just said something ignorant like commenting on somebody’s spelling instead of what they were saying.
To the matter at hand I am not sure if you were able to grasp this but I not really behind this measure. I just have not seen any evidence showing that it would have no impact on the meth market in the short term.
Have a nice day.

@Ryan:
While Aron (ARBaboon) might have a juvenile sense of humor and may be slightly spelling impaired, I assure you that, since I have known him since our freshmen year of college, he’s definitely on the positive side of 18.
@Aron:
I have to present my drivers’ license, sign a pad and give my phone number, while I simply have to sign a voters’ registry in pencil in order to vote. I think our society’s (or our society’s politicians’) priorities are just a wee bit off.
I want my Sudafed on the medicine aisle and I want the friggin’ Target clerks to stop treating me like a potential meth dealer, thankyouverymuch.