We could just outlaw fire

The Kentucky House has passed legislation that limits the quantity of popular over-the-counter cold and allergy medications — again, only more so.

According to published reports, the measure passed now to the Senate for approval would allow folks to purchase 7.2 grams monthly of medications containing pseudoephedrine, and up to 24 grams each year.

An additional 7.5 grams per month, or 90 grams per year, could be obtained with a prescription and, as we all know, doctors would never prescribe anything that was not completely necessary, and then only in the correct amounts, so since no one would allow someone else to use medication that was prescribed to that person ... yay! Good job solving the meth problem!

Again.

State law already limits purchases to 9 grams per month, and a photo ID¿and signature already are required, but the new legislation seems to imply the old legislation didn’t solve the problem, so the obvious answer is to do it again — only more so.

I don’t use meth myself. I can’t have no-bake cookies in the house, either.

I have learned things about how my body and brain works and, knowing this, give substances that light up my brain a wide berth.

Oh sure, it’s a radical approach, knowing how to survive my own physiology. Some of my favorite people (Stephen King and Robert Downey Jr., and some closer to home) have learned the hard way that the opposite of addiction is recovery, not legislation.

I¿don’t use cold medicines, allergy medicines or over-the-counter drugs (DO¿NOT¿get me started on prescription drugs) and the like either, but this is because I am THIS¿MANY! years old now, (see how many fingers I’m holding up!) and still alive, so I reckon it’s possible to live without medicating myself despite the enormous peer pressure from every side to do so.

TV and print and radio and every other kind of ad imaginable insists I have been assembled wrong and that there is a pill for that. I can’t go to a doctor without being offered a little something. I can’t take one of my children to the doctor without (both of us!)¿being offered something that carries a risk of dependence.

I have a sneaking suspicion that if I used the pseudoephedrine amounts already approved, I’d become dependent and would probably suffer physical and mental injury over time (think:¿“Supersize Me” only wired) and likely be unable to function.

To my mind, the issue is not about “use,” which is legal and allowable (nearly required) but “abuse,” which is ingesting the same ingredients, homemade.

Seems to me the only differences at the end of the day are semantic.

Remember Prohibition? Or, more recently, living in a “dry” county? That worked, right?

No?

Bootleggers were arrested, honestly, as tax evaders. Maybe the real divide between “use” and “abuse” is who gets the revenue from the consequences of addiction.

Or not.

Meth is a destructive force. The user is stripped of humanity and health, and an ever-widening concentric circle around users impacts innocent children and communities who are harmed by the culture that accompanies illegal activities.

Communities demand — and deserve — action.

Lawmakers do what they do and pass laws. More laws and more police and more jails and more foster homes are one way to approach an epidemic.