Written April 1st, 2020 (not an April Fools Joke, unfortunately.)
As a Libertarian, I feel strongly that you should be able to do whatever you want to yourself. No victim, no crime. If you want to do Meth, then do Meth. I don’t think it’s a good idea, but it’s not my life, it is yours. Just don’t have your hand out asking for help after a series of bad decisions. That’s part of personal responsibility.
Our current laws don’t agree with me though. We have a plethora of laws designed to prevent you from harming yourself. The one I want to focus on today is the absurdity of the restrictions around pseudoephedrine.
Federal law prohibits the sale of pseudoephedrine without showing a valid ID, signing for it, and buying it from behind the counter.
At the time of writing this, COVID-19 has usurped our way of life. Businesses have [temporarily] closed, only essential travel is recommended, and the public is strongly encouraged to shelter-in-place and limit exposure to other humans.
But not if you have allergies. If you have allergies you must:
At a time when countless government rules are being shown to be pointless, I want to point out how not only is this law pointless, it’s actually dangerous in times like these. Everything we’re told to do right now to limit our exposure to disease is overruled with a useless and ineffective law around the purchasing of pseudoephedrine.
The rules around pseudoephedrine were passed with the Patriot Act by President Bush in 2006. Let’s look at statistics for Meth deaths in the US:
With a limit of individual pseudoephedrine possession, our Meth deaths should be very low, correct? It doesn’t look like these laws are doing anything, except hassling the law abiding citizen who needs this drug.
As an adult, you should be free to make your own choices, whether or not they affect you negatively. Time and time again, rules that prohibit or make us jump through hoops do nothing to curtail the behavior that government finds abhorrent, but instead simply makes our lives more difficult.
Let’s not forget that every law that restricts or makes something burdensome is also increasing the government’s need for tax money. These things don’t happen for free. The implementation costs to track pseudoephedrine sales, the unification of databases across the country to track this. The employment of vast numbers of people to administer the sales side, the law enforcement side, and policy side of these laws.
Let us also not forget the cost to employers who have employees taking sick days because their allergies are too bad for them to work, because they’ve reached their limit of pseudoephedrine for the month.
Oh, and the Meth addicts? They’re still doing their Meth. That hasn’t stopped.
If you’d like to discuss, this post has been shared to the JasonforOffice FB page.
Not only do I approve of this message, I wrote it – Jason Eicholtz