Sinus headaches vs. Meth Labs

Wow... you're all shocked and amazed... Jim's actually updating his blog again. So... what is it that finally pissed me off enough to blow the dust off my blog page?

A freaking sinus headache, that's what.

I get sinus headaches fairly regularly, and it doesn't seem to take much for them to occur. If it's too dry in my bedroom, I get them. If I oversleep I get them. If I get drunk the night before... oh man, I REALLY get them. This is why I rarely drink excessively anymore. The pounding headaches leave enough of an impression that it really takes the fun out of getting sloshed.

Lately, I've had a lot of sinus headaches... almost daily for the last few weeks. I think it's due to the change of weather that we go through every spring, and since this spring has been a lot drier than normal, I think it's making my headaches worse.

So... to help deal with these sinus headaches, I take Pseudophedrine. This is the crap that's in Sudafed and other sinus/cold medications. This is also the same stuff that meth head idiots buy to turn into methamphetamine. We've all seen the pictures on the 'net of meth heads who went from normal looking folks to a total trainwreck within a year, and we've all seen tv shows where some moron with a meth lab wound up blowing up half of a city block. Nasty stuff.

The primary source of my anger is that, like with most things, rather than produce legislation and laws that effectively target the illegal activities and those who perform them, our spineless no-nut do-nothing politicians have discovered that it's easier to simply make it harder for people to get the materials/resources necessary for the law breakers to do their thing. This is why it's so hard for a law abiding citizen to legally buy a gun, and it's why it took me a fucking half hour to buy a fucking box of Sudafed yesterday!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now, keep in mind that I've actually been trying to buy a box for over a week, but Wal Mart keeps the shit under lock and key in their pharmacy, which of course isn't open when I shop there on Sunday evenings. So yesterday, I stopped at CVS for some. I brought my little fake empty box of Sudafed to the front counter as instructed. I pulled out my driver's license and gave it to the clerk, as instructed. The problem was that Vermont still issues non-photo licenses unless you renew in person at the registry, so the licence I gave her was an old license. Nevermind that it's still me, it's still the same license number, and it's still got my fricking DOB clearly posted on it. So after she gets a manager involved, I whip out license number 2, this one being the valid one without a picture. The manager pumps the keyboard like a certain horny cocker spaniel likes to pump my leg (you know who you are). Eventually Mr Fingers finishes his amazingly complicated orchestration of keyboard theatrics and it's up to me to particpate in the frenzy through the display panel of the credit card reader. I see a line and a bunch of buttons, including "Disagree" and "agree". I push the agree button and the screen disappears. Apparently I was supposed to sign on that line before hitting the "agree" button, because the whole fucking transaction just voided itself and our fearless CVS manager now had to start the whole process all over again.

Eventually I was able to finish paying for my 2 boxes of CVS-branded Nasal Decongestant. After I finished paying, the clerk slid the two boxes and the receipt toward me. At this point I screamed something about a bag and almost made this poor chick cry, but that didn't stop her from pissing me off 1 last time by putting my boxes of Crystal Meth ingredients into a bag so fucking small that it reminded me of all those fat Canadians in Speedos that I used to see on the beach in Maine.

So, now, here are some interesting facts that I dug up on Meth and its production and the restrictions imposed on Pseudophedrine and Epedrine.

1. As of 2007, drug and lab seizure data suggests that approximately 80 percent of the methamphetamine used in the United States originates from larger laboratories operated by Mexican-based syndicates on both sides of the border, and that approximately 20 percent comes from small toxic labs (STLs) in the United States.

This means that my inability to buy a simple over the counter box of cold medicine has become a never-ending cluster fuck simply because the government thinks that a slight reduction in the number of meth labs that only account for 20% of the fricking stuff in the first place is worth putting millions of honest, law abiding cold & sinus headache sufferers at a fairly ridiculous inconvenience all so that some moron in Alabama doesn't blow up the Shasta RV sitting in the back of some redneck's corn field.

2. The National Drug Threat Assessment 2006, produced by the Department of Justice, found "decreased domestic methamphetamine production in both small and large-scale laboratories", but also that "decreases in domestic methamphetamine production have been offset by increased production in Mexico." They concluded that "methamphetamine availability is not likely to decline in the near term."

So, for all of this bullshit, Mexico just picks up the slack, making the product just as readily available. Plus, let's face it, at least when Americans are making the meth, the money stays in the US economy instead of going to Mexico.

Info on the purchase of Pseudophedrine:

The House passed the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act of 2005 ("CMEA") as an amendment to the renewal of the Patriot Act. Signed into law by president George W. Bush on March 6, 2006, the act amended Title 21 of the United States Code (21 USC 830) concerning the sale of pseudoephedrine-containing products. The Federal statute included the following requirements for merchants ("regulated seller") who sell these products (pseudoephedrine is defined as a "scheduled listed chemical product under 21 U.S.C. § 802(45(A)):

-- A retrievable record of all purchases identifying the name and address of each party to be kept for two years.
-- Required verification of proof of identity of all purchasers
-- Required protection and disclosure methods in the collection of personal information
-- Reports to the Attorney General of any suspicious payments or disappearances of the regulated products
-- Required training of employees with regard to the requirements of the CMEA; Retailer must self-certify as to training and compliance
-- Non-liquid dose form of regulated product may only be sold in unit dose blister packs
-- Regulated products are to be stored behind the counter or in a locked cabinet in such a way as to restrict public access
-- Daily sales of regulated products not to exceed 3.6 grams without regard to the number of transactions
-- 30 day (not monthly) sales limit not to exceed 7.5 grams if sold by mail-order or "mobile retail vendor"
-- 30 day purchase limit not to exceed 9 grams of pseudoephedrine base in regulated products (misdemeanor possession offense under 21 U.S.C. § 844a for the individual who buys it)

So, as part of the PATRIOT ACT, I can't buy my fucking sudafed without the government keeping tabs on my purchases for a period of 2 years. The government knows how much I bought it, when I bought it, where I bought it and whether or not it gave me an erection.

So in other words, buying my cold medicine gave me a bigger fucking headache than the one I bought the cold medicine to fix.