First up, a prosecutor in my home state of WI is taking things a little too far, as she tries to prosecute a 6 year old boy for playing Doctor with a 5 year old girl (an obvious case of an older man taking advantage of a younger woman). Â First off, shame on this DA for trying to make her bones on the back of a 6 year old boy. Â I know Grant County is not the hotbed of violent murders and suave criminals that you’ll find everyday in… well, not in WI, that’s for sure, but this is as manufactured a case as it gets.
And second, which adult in this whole mess called THE F*CKING POLICE OVER A GAME OF DOCTOR?!  Sh*t, I can’t tell you how often I played doctor when I was a little boy, and it was certainly a quid pro quo game.  We all got our curiosity satisfied, and no one got pregnant because, well, we were 6 years old!  Girls still had cooties, and the only reason the game was on was because curiosity got the better of cootie fear.  And yes, our parents knew.  I didn’t know they knew until the decided that telling me would result in the maximum amount of teenage embarrassment, but the knew, and recognized it as harmless, and now that I think about it, that’s about when mom gave me a copy of “Where Did I Come From?” and told me to read it, and come to her with questions.
Major responsible adult fail, here, and not just on the part of the prosecutor and the DA who signed off on it.
Next up, for us outdoorsy types, seems Iodine is now verboten because Meth heads use it to make Meth. Â So your iodine tabs for killing bacteria in water while hiking? Â Yep, those are now evil. Â Good thing I have a healthy supply of them, and a medical grade water filter.
I am so tired of the fed.gov banning shit because it might be used for X. Â I don’t care what X is, you need to have a really damn good reason to limit access to X. Â And, as the Sudafed ban has shown, the drug makers will just crack out the organic chem and figure out another way to get there.
Next time you’re in Mexico, go to your friendly supermercado, and right in the veggie section will be the Gotas Purificandas, no more than $2US per bottle. Pick up a few. They’re not illegal to import, only buy OTC in the USA.
“So your iodine tabs for killing bacteria in water while hiking? Yep, those are now evil. Good thing I have a healthy supply of them, and a medical grade water filter.”
I had to visit the link because I honestly thought this was a joke.
Jesus Fucking Krypton.
What drives me crazy is that the people who force these restrictions because something could theoretically be used to make something, or is used to make around 10% of the supply of something illegal, is that the legitimate users, who vastly, vastly outnumber the “illegitimate” users, WHO ARE STATISTICALLY HARMING NOBODY OTHER THAN THEMSELVES.
Both law enforcement statistics as well as economies of scale demonstrate that those “cooking” meth from commercial items such as decongestant or iodine tablets are not distributing, i.e. they are making enough for themselves and possibly a partner or two.
However, making me go to a doctor, and pay a co-pay or for the entire visit depending on my insurance, forcing insurance companies to be involved, paperwork, wasting resources at a pharmacy, and paying ten bucks for two weeks’ supply of decongestants because of all the paperwork, when I used to be able to buy three months’ supply for the same amount of money, is patently stupid.
Or forcing me to buy some more elaborate commercial product that has gone through the hoops and costs far more when I could just have iodine tablets for a few bucks… absolutely retarded.
This does not result in “safety” and “compliance.” Rather, it breeds two situations:
1. Vastly expanded agency power, and
2. Complete contempt for the law in the real victims – the legitimate user – who, again, was not bothered by and will not be bothered by the theoretical “illegitimate” user.