Britt's Blog

J takes an allergy medicine containing pseudoephedrine HCl, aka Sudafed, which, in tablet form, is used by some persons in the illegal manufacture of methamphedamines.

Because this product might be used illegally, and because meth is admittedly a big problem in this country, like many states, Wisconsin has passed legislation based on the presumption that any citizen is just tablets away from cookin’ up a batch of meth in his basement.

So you can’t buy a product containing pseudoephedrine HCl in a store that doesn’t have a pharmacy counter.

You can’t buy a product containing pseudoephedrine HCl if your store’s pharmacy is not open.

You can’t buy more than one package of any product containing pseudoephedrine HCl at a time.

You can’t buy a product containing pseudoephedrine HCl if you are not at least 18 years of age.

You can’t buy a product containing pseudoephedrine HCl if you do not have a valid picture ID.

You can’t buy a product containing pseudoephedrine HCl unless you allow the store to keep your name and home address on file and sign for the product.

In some stores, the latter provision involves waiting while a pharmacy technician, who probably is getting paid ‘way above minimum wage, and who is also probably eyeing the long line of customers behind you, copies your name and address and the product you are purchasing into a logbook by hand. You will then be asked to sign the logbook. Depending on the store, they may or may not violate HIPAA regulations by handing you (and every subsequent pseudoephedrine-HCl-buying customer) the logbook with previous pseudoephedrine-HCl-buying customers’ names, addresses and signatures unobscured.

Whether or not anyone working in the pharmacy ever looks at this logbook again is anybody’s guess. I strongly suspect not.

Walgreens is a little more hi-tech about the whole thing, and keeps their log on the computer. This makes keeping the log a little faster, as they don’t have to re-enter your name and address every time, and little less of a transparently stupid and pointless inconvenience. The downside of the computerized approach is that it allows them actually keep track of the pseudeoephedrine HCl products you buy. When you’ve reached the limit of 7.5 grams every 30 days, they refuse to sell you any more.

Because anyone who buys 8 g of psueodoephedrine HCl in a 30 day period?

Meth freak.

Claritin-D 24 and its generic counterparts, including the ever-so-creatively-named “Walitin-D 24,” contain 240 mg of pseudoephedrine HCl per tablet. If you buy a 30-day supply, that’s 7.2 grams of psueodoephedrine HCl.

Except, you can’t buy a 30-day supply. You can buy at most one package at a time, so you have to go back to the pharmacy every 10 of 15 days, depending on what size packages they sell.

And if you are about to run out of allergy medicine, but you’ve already purchased 30 tablets from Walgreens in the last 30 days, guess what? Life sucks for you. You can’t buy any from Walgreens. You have to come back when the 30 days is up.

Except that their computer can’t tell you when the 30 days is up, only that you have, within the last 30 days or less, purchased enough pseudoephedrine HCl that your current desired purchase would put you over the limit.

Now, of course, you could hop in your car and go down the street to Shopko, which has the aforementioned HIPPA-violating paper log. Or you could go up the street to the Cub Pharmacy, which has a non-HIPAA-violating paper log with this little plastic window thing that prevents you from reading addresses. Either way, you to easily acquire another totally illegal 2-4 grams of psueodoephedrine HCl with almost no risk of incarceration.

Now, don’t get me wrong; while I’m anti-drug-prohibition, I’m no fan of the methamphetamines, and I don’t mean to make light of the consequences of the unfortunate widespread illegal trade in, and abuse of, the drug, which has been particularly devastating in rural areas (e.g. in our very own Dairy State). Meth in and of itself is nasty, and the process of its manufacture is dangerous, especially when undertaken by maleducated tweakers. I won’t argue that draconian restrictions on the sale of pseudoephedrine HCl have not had an impact on the manufacture of methamphetamines in Wisconsin and other states that have adopted such laws.

But I cannot figure out why they couldn’t make the limit 10 g per 30 days, a trivial change which would raise the limit to a level would almost never inconvenience a legitimate user. I also cannot figure out how hassling pharmacists and their customers with a paper log that nobody ever looks at is helping us win the War on Drugs. The paper log is insanely time-consuming, while requiring all pharmacies to institute a Walgreens-style computer system is quite a financial burden on the retailers. It seems to me that the one-package-a-day restriction is probably sufficient on its own; if some dude with bloodshot eyes and a nervous twitch shows up for the fifth time in one day to buy Sudafed, I don’t think you need a log to tell that something’s amiss.

I constantly embarrass Jason by complaining bitterly about these measures almost every time we have to buy allergy medicine. The pharmacists are complaining right along with me, of course. Nonetheless, J usually goes on these errands without me, because he’s convinced that my sarcastic carping to the pharmacist at Walgreens is dangerously similar joking with the TSA, and one of these days the Beloit PD is going to jump out from behind a display of homeopathic rash ointments and electronic dancing Santas and drag me off to jail in a Dave-Greenbaum-esque fiasco.

It’s a chance I’m willing to take.

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As I stumbled out of the house this morning and fumbled with the locks, I heard an odd, rustling sound. At first I thought someone (or some squirrel) was walking through our front yard, but no, it was coming from . . . everywhere!

Our neighborhood is full of maples, and, ladies and gentlemen, the maples have decided that it is Fall. Up and down every street, for blocks and blocks and blocks, yellow maple leaves are falling, scores of leaves wafting down through the air. At the foot of every maple tree is a golden pool.

It reminds me of those amazing autumn days in Ithaca when the locust trees dropped their leaves, and driving down State Street was like being in a parade, showered with an unending adulation of golden, confetti-sized leaves. The tiny leaves would pool in the streets and swirl up into a renewed celebration with every passing car.

It’s a beautiful sight, but one can’t help but think of the winter weather on its way.

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This year we had our very first trick-o-treaters. They didn’t let kids trick-or-treat around our apartment in Ithaca (scary highway, narrow shoulders), and they didn’t trick our treat in our apartment building last year, so this was the very first time.

Some people’s kids are damn rude, but most of them were really adorable.

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