"The Man" is Keeping Me From My Nyquil

Today the partner I work for stopped by my office and the first thing he said was, "What's the matter? You look tired . . . or sad. Is something wrong?" No. I just have a cold lovingly provided by my two-year old walking Petri Dish.

When he first got the cold, I didn't sleep well because he was coughing during the night. Now he's sleeping fine and I'm the one coughing through the night.

The other day, I sent Chris to a major drug chain (you can find one on almost every street corner - - we'll just call them W.G. for short) to purchase some more cold medications for the lot of us, since we were using medicine like candy.

So he went to WG's pharmacy to purchase said medication. Dimetapp for the kiddos. Sudafed for Chris. Nyquil for me. (I was hoping to get a good night's sleep.) In Missouri (and several other states) these over the counter medications are now behind the counter thanks to laws designed to keep Billy Bob from manufacturing meth in the trunk of his 1978 Cutlass while he's on his way to meet his probation officer. Sorry. I slipped back into prosecutor mode.

Anyway, he told the lady behind the counter what he wanted -- Dimetapp, Sudafed and Nyquil. She informed him that purchasing all three medications would exceed his allotted allowance for psuedoephedrine products. He just looked at her, wondering which one of us will have to do without medication. However, the lady volunteered a solution: she'd just ring them up separately, that way, he wouldn't exceed the allowed quantities. So he completed the purchases and brought the goods home.

I think Billy Bob's smart enough to figure that one out. When this law was enacted in Oklahoma, I was a prosecutor in an area that had LOTS of meth use. After the law, meth production drastically decreased. (However, it was replaced by crack from the west coast and Mexican meth shipped in from the south. Here in STL, heroin seems to be the drug of choice.)

It's a dual edged sword, isn't it? I want my Nyquil. I want my kids to have Dimetapp. I want to be able to buy them whenever I want. However, I don't want Billy Bob cooking meth in his kitchen next door to me. So I sacrifice some liberty in hopes that Billy Bob will stop cooking meth and will become an upright citizen like me. Now my name is in someone's pseudoephedrine log and they are analyzing how much Sudafed I've bought and I'll never get the ability to puchase Sudafed unsupervised back.

Historically, when people begin to give up freedoms, they never get them back. Just food for thought.