New war on drugs? What a headache

Jo Pope |
Posted July 14, 2006



In March, sometime while I was sleeping off a sinus attack, Congress passed a law restricting the sale of pseudoephedrine, ephedrine and phenylpropanolamine products. Public Law 109-177 places these medications into a new Controlled Substances Act designed to limit the manufacture and sale of methamphetamine, a highly addictive drug.

Those three medicines can be synthesized into the above illegal drug. All well and good unless, like me, you have chronic nasal allergies.

I found out recently, when trying to purchase Claritin-D for a pesky allergy problem, that I can no longer run into a store, buy medication containing pseudoephedrine, then quickly get out. I don't want regular Claritin and it's the "D" part (pseudoephedrine) that caused my problem.

Finally, we found it at Wal-Mart. But not before looking in three different stores. I quickly realized that what I thought was a box of pills was, in fact, a stack of plastic cards. There were three stacks of cards, representing Claritin-D 20 tablets, 10 tablets and five tablets.

Taking a card for the 20-tablet box to the pharmacy counter, I discovered that I could purchase only one box. More than that puts me over the legal limit. According to the new law, which will go into effect nationally on Sept. 30, I may not purchase more than 3.6 grams of pseudoephedrine daily or more than 9.0 grams/monthly.

I neither know nor care about how much of this drug I have to purchase in order to manufacture an illegal drug. I only know that buying the medication was an aggravating and somewhat demeaning experience. The clerk had to see my drivers license, and I had to sign a logbook. So much for privacy and personal responsibility.

This law is just not going to work. Let's face facts: If a criminal wants to get hard-to-find drugs, the criminal will get them.

What Congress has done with good intentions and incessant meddling is to open a lucrative market for organized crime. No longer will the manufacture and sale of methamphetamine be the element of individual backwoodsmen and localized urban drug dealers; it's going to be a huge problem. Anyone remember Prohibition?

Meanwhile, for people like the woman in line behind me, sick daughter in tow, who had to whip out her drivers license to buy Triaminic Children's Cold & Nighttime Cough, it's a headache.

Congratulations, Congress, you've just re-created the war on drugs! I wonder how many law-enforcement officers will die because of it? Too bad that little girl in Wal-Mart is already in the line of fire.

For more info, check out: http://www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov/pubs/b rochures/pseudo/pseudo-notice .htm



Jo Pope, a free-lance writer and photographer, lives in Tavares.