Don’t get sick in Union, Missouri. Not if you need Sudafed in a hurry.
Union is the second city in the nation to require a prescription for sales of medicine containing pseudoephedrine. This is an active ingredient in Sudafed, a drug that good-hearted and responsible people might take to relieve nasal congestion.
However, pseudoephedrine can also be used to make methamphetamine, a very popular and very strong (and very illegal) psychoactive drug.
The reasoning seems to be that if something used in a good thing can also be used in a bad thing, you can’t trust people to use the good thing without erecting blocks to said usage.
If applied consistently, such a regulatory principle would mean you’d have to get a prescription for 80 percent of the stuff in your home. Did you know that if you gargle with detergent, it can be injurious to your health? No wonder you need a doctor’s prescription.
Over at the Show-Me Institute’s blog, Sarah Brodsky notes that when sufferers have no good alternative to Sudafed, they must call in sick, “find time to go to the doctor’s office . . . or go to work unmedicated.” She adds that unmedicated allergy sufferers aren’t exactly at their best.
But hey. The important thing is politicians pretending to do good by making it harder for us to do good for ourselves. Right?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.