Mark's Blog

I read quickly through the blog topic you referenced. At first I thought these posters were replying way too strongly for a small inconvience -- that their response was so emotional that I could put little value on any reasoning included in their emotional response. After reading through the entries I did change my mind somewhat. I would grant that the inconvience could seem significant because a person goes to buy a sinus medication usually at a time when they are sick and standing in line at the pharmicist counter for 3 to 7 minutes would be uncomfortable. It is true that this inconvience seems much greater if you feel the extra hoops you are jumping through are worthless, in this case meaning that this procedure will not result in people having more trouble manufacturing crystal meth or other such substances. However, I suspect this added step in getting sinus medicine does result in making it more difficult to obtain it for maunfacturing illegal drugs but whether it is a substantial enough roadblock to affect the overall situation is open to question.

Some of the posters seem to object more on a privacy issue as it seems important to them to be able to buy the medication anonymously. This may be another case of unreasonable expectations of privacy in public transactions.

I also wonder what country these posters were from. Only one mentioned a location and, if I remember correctly, that was Aukland.

Maybe some of the posters live in California, because the guy who has that blog lives in San Francisco and operates a night club. He's famous for having written the UNIX code for the original Netscape browser back in the mid 90s.

Our CEO said, and then was told to regret, "You have no privacy. Get over it." To a large extent, that seems like a reasonably good model to me, as long as we accept that, "Some people have bad taste. Get over it." When it all hangs out, some of what hangs out might be considered eyesores.

Freedom probably ought to stop where it begins impinging seriously on the freedom of others. In that I include the freedom to decide how other people should behave. If amphetamine addicts really could restrict their behavior such that no one else was bothered by it, I'd almost (but not quite) be willing to say let them go ahead. It's their problem.

In reality, they'll be doing things that cause trouble for other people, too. Driving while under the influence of dangerous drugs; petty larceny to pay for more drugs; agreeing to pay rent they then cannot get the money together to pay because they spent it all on drugs; pushing drugs on people who wouldn't choose to do them of their own accord so they, the pushers, can buy more drugs, etc.

My point is not to defend methamphetamine users. My point is that the reaction to their behavior has gone far overboard, and that the going overboard behavior perversely ends up encouraging the methamphetamine using behavior. What's funny is how we fall into that again and again, and then, in the US at least, we have widespread acceptance for an approach that is at least irritating, and at worse quite destructive.

France has those ironies, too. I should write about them.

Has locking up pseudoephedrine become law in the States? I thought the retailers were trying to deter the shoplifting of those OTC meds, not discourage the meth-heads from cooking it up in the trunks of their cars. Had the "cooks" not stolen the drugs, I doubt they would be locked behind the counter.