DMN On Leo Berman’s Idiotic Anti-Meth Law
By Vince Leibowitz on Mar 23, 2006 in Texas Legislature
The Dallas Morning News has this on the idiotic anti-meth law that was enacted by the Texas Legislature in 2005 which requires you to show your driver’s license when you buy allergy medication.
I didn’t realize that the law was authored by Rep. Leo Berman (R-Tyler), who, to my knowledge, has never drafted a bill that is worth the paper it is written on.
At any rate, the law has always t’d me off because of the whole Driver’s License thing. Every time I buy allergy medication, it’s an ordeal. And, some retail stores (our local Wal-Mart in particular) ask for information the law does not require them to collect, including your SSN, phone number, and place of employment. Well I say they do, they did until I called that lovely 1-800-Wal-Mart and complained. Now they just make you show your driver’s license.
Anyway, the consensus of the article is that the law isn’t working; it’s not even being enforced. Furthermore, something the article does not address is that there is also evidently a regulation in either Texas law or the Patriot Act that governs how many varieties of medication containing the evil pseudoephedrine a store can carry.
My local Wal-Mart stopped carrying, for example their own store brand version of several name brand medications, as well as several name brand medications, and the pharmacy people there told me they weren’t allowed to carry so many meds. This is something I found out last year when I was sick to death with a cold and wanted to buy the generic of Tylenol Cold Severe Congestion. I was told they neither had it or the original now because of the aforementioned regulation.
How stupid.
Disagree. Showing your license takes all of two seconds, and it’s not like Sudafed is the only product on the market. The law has proven to work in Oklahoma, but it took time to get set up there, just as it’s taking time to get set up here in Texas, too. Meth is the single biggest drug threat in most of rural Texas, and cleaning up meth labs places an incredible burden on local counties (as much as $10,000 for a single meth lab). Perfect, the law isn’t, but it certainly makes a lot more sense than other drug laws on the books.
Just give it some time.
(Shudder). I just realized I used Oklahoma as an example of something good that’s happening. I might have just completely changed my mind…
I agree that I may need to give the law more time, but I dispute that showing the license takes “all of two seconds,” at least in my neck of the woods. For some reason, in Rural East Texas (and I will even include Tyler in this, as it happened to my mom there), it doesn’t take two seconds because they write all of the information down if they don’t have a scanner to run the license through. And, they do this every time. And, if you’ve got a last name like mine, that takes some time.
I do agree meth must be stopped and acknowledge the tremendous cost to local governments; I just don’t think this is the best way to do it. And, I’ll admit: I don’t have a better idea. So, maybe I’ll just shut up and give it some time.
Actually, the law hasn’t really worked in Oklahoma, and has boosted both the avaiability of meth and profits for drug cartels. I agree it’s a bad law, or at least a pointless one.
Whoops, the link on profits to cartels was supposed to go here.