Need cold medicine? Keep your ID handy [will have to have ID logged to buy cold medication]

Pajamas Media ^ | Jun 2, 2006

[Conservative Goddess]

Whether they are working to my satisfaction is a matter for me and my family to decide. It is NOT for the government to decide.

90 pills is what I sought to buy.......a 30 day supply for 3 people. I am precluded from buying the 90 pills needed to treat me and my family for seasonal allergies because of this stupidity.

[mugs99]

Why would you not want drugs regulated?

Why would you want to give another high profit chemical to the drug lords?
.

[A CA Guy]

Why would you not want drugs regulated?

Why would you want to give another high profit chemical to the drug lords?

It's dangerous, I don't want neighborhoods being blown up as they try and make meth.
Pretty much all third world sh1t holes have dictators or drug lords ruining their nations with illegal drugs and we IMO don't need to become them.
I do not want our future to be Mexico's.

[elkfersupper]

You have to go to the register to buy your allergy medications anyway, so having to show your drivers license (which if you pay by credit card is done anyway) is no big deal.

Maybe we should just stop nibbling around the edges and require this procedure for purchase of all goods and services.

After all, it is Biblical.

[Conservative Goddess]

Another perspective on restricting drug purchases......

FROM: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114928891619270269.html?mod=opinion_main_featured_stories_hs

Whose Life Is It, Anyway?

By ROGER PILON
June 3, 2006; Page A9

In a little-noticed decision last month, the D.C. Circuit ruled that terminally ill, mentally competent patients have a constitutional right to seek potentially life-saving drugs -- whether or not the Food and Drug Administration has given its final approval for sale.

The case is far from finished, however: On remand, the FDA will try to show that its prohibition is, in the jargon of such things, "narrowly tailored" to serve a "compelling governmental interest." Still, the court's reasoning in the case -- Abigail Alliance for Better Access to Development Drugs v. Eschenbach -- is rich with implications for medical freedom and constitutional jurisprudence.

For most of our history, as Judge Judith Rogers explained (joined by Chief Judge Douglas Ginsburg), individuals were free to take whatever medication they wanted without a doctor's prescription. It was only in 1951 that Congress created a category of prescription drugs; and, in 1962, it began requiring drug companies to conduct extensive tests to ensure the efficacy of their products. That led to long delays in the release of potentially lifesaving drugs, and to the deaths of countless patients who would gladly have borne the unknown risks for a chance at life.

The Abigail Alliance (named after Abigail Burroughs, a 21-year-old college student who died of cancer) petitioned the FDA on behalf of its terminally ill members, seeking access to drugs that had cleared Phase I of the lengthy testing process. (That's the point at which a new drug is deemed sufficiently safe for more extensive human testing.)

When that effort failed, the alliance sued to stop the FDA from barring the sale of such drugs to its members. (It was joined in its action by the conservative public interest law firm, the Washington Legal Foundation.) The district court dismissed the suit, saying that under the Fifth Amendment -- which prohibits government from depriving people of life, liberty or property without due process of law -- it could find no such right as the alliance was claiming.

Not so, said the appeals court. It found the right -- and found it "in" the Constitution. Given the state of constitutional jurisprudence today, that was no mean feat. Here's why.

At the time the Constitution was sent to the states for ratification, several states balked, insisting that a bill of rights be added. But no such bill could list all of our rights. The failure to do so, however, raised the implication that only the enumerated rights were meant to be protected.

So the Framers gave us the Ninth Amendment, which states that we have unenumerated rights, too -- effectively giving the courts authority to fill in the blanks. But that creative power is hardly unique to the Ninth Amendment: Even enumerated rights -- such as speech, property, due process -- require judicial interpretation.

When they authorized judicial review, the Framers assumed that judges would have a grasp of the Constitution's natural rights and common law foundations. Unfortunately, today's judges are far removed from those foundations. The result is confusion, and divisive controversies.

Liberal judges, often hostile toward our founding principles, invent rights by drawing on their own conceptions of evolving social values. Reacting to the perceived judicial activism, conservative judges go overboard the other way, recognizing only those rights expressly "in" the Constitution -- thus ignoring the presumption of individual liberty at the very foundation of the document. Neither side gets it right. The Constitution no more authorizes judges to invent rights from whole cloth than it allows them to ignore rights plainly meant to be protected.

The D.C. circuit got it right in Abigail. Recognizing, first, that the Due Process Clause has long protected substantive rights, the court noted two distinct approaches in the Supreme Court's rights jurisprudence. One, based in "personal dignity and autonomy," has led the court (sometimes wrongly) to prohibit state intrusion in "the bedroom, the clinic, and the womb" -- e.g., abortion. The other approach, more restrictive, finds a right only if it is "deeply rooted in the Nation's history and tradition."

Carefully following this more restrictive approach (to avoid the charge of activism), the court noted the precise description of the right the Abigail Alliance claimed, and then traced the history in America of the more generally described rights from which it is derived -- the right to potentially life-saving medication, the right to control one's body, the right to self-preservation and the right to life.

Finding those rights in the centuries-old common law, the court concluded that, in contrast to those ancient principles, it is the FDA's regulation of access that is new. Accordingly, if there is a fundamental right to refuse life-sustaining treatment, as the Supreme Court had found in 1990, there is, equally, a right to seek life-sustaining medication free from government interference.

That's hardly pulling a right "out of thin air," as the Washington Post charged editorially in its defense of FDA bureaucrats. It is not the freewheeling stuff of Roe v. Wade, but rather the careful mining of Locke, Blackstone and Madison.

To the layman, such judicial hermeneutics must seem tedious, for a simple question should settle the matter: Whose life is it, anyway? That it doesn't is a mark of how far we've strayed from our founding principles. Statutory schemes today have replaced common law, policy has replaced principle -- and transient majorities tell us what our rights are.

Well, that may be changing. Last year the Canadian Supreme Court struck down two Quebec laws that banned private payment for services covered under its Medicare program (if you live long enough to receive them), as violating constitutional guarantees to life, liberty and security of person. In this country, with often well-to-do baby-boomers aging, access to health care will be a growing issue. Costs aside, demands simply for access -- and for medical freedom -- may yet breathe life into an ailing Constitution.

Mr. Pilon is vice president for legal affairs at the Cato Institute, where he holds the B. Kenneth Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies.


When are we going to stop the stupidity?

[mugs99]

When are we going to stop the stupidity?

Probably never. On the bright side, government has become so big and dysfunctional it will collapse on its own in the near future. The opportunity for libertarians to replace big government will exist then...IMHO
.

[mugs99]

It's dangerous, I don't want neighborhoods being blown up as they try and make meth.

LOL!
What you want or don't want has nothing to do with reality, it just plays into the hands of those dictators who scam you with their fear mongering.
FACT:
Every time government enacts a restriction or regulation it results in an increase of stronger and cheaper illegal drugs on our streets. No government rule, regulation or law has ever resulted in a decrease of illegal drugs.

I do not want our future to be Mexico's.

Then why do you support the drug lords?
The drug lords support drug prohibition exactly the same as Al Capone supported alcohol prohibition.
.

[ActionNewsBill]

Guys, it says in the article this is federal law, part of the new Patriot Act.

But...but...but...the PATRIOT ACT will only be used to go after the terrorists.

At least that's what the boot-lickers all say.

[mugs99]

PATRIOT ACT will only be used to go after the terrorists.

Looks like they gave up on catching terrorists and decided to go after patriots.
.

[ActionNewsBill]

Looks like they gave up on catching terrorists and decided to go after patriots.

That was the plan all along.

There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals.

Well, when there aren't enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone?

But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt.

[mugs99]

That was the plan all along

Where is John Galt?
.

[A CA Guy]

You do know you can get a prescription for a year by your doctor to be kept at the pharmacy for you special circumstances and you will be able to get what you need.

[A CA Guy]

If you have a whole family of allergy sufferers, you could get a prescription for a year and keep it with the pharmacy. Problem solved.

[A CA Guy]

You can go get a prescription for a years supply if you have a large need and that would take care of your issues.

This is to only stop the criminals who buy large supplies.

[tacticalogic]

We could just kill 'em all for being druggies because they don't like drug regulations.

[A CA Guy]

They could just get a prescription for severe conditions and get all the medication they need.

[tacticalogic]

They could. Heck, we could've just put up with King George.

[Dead Corpse]

This is to only stop the criminals who buy large supplies.

Number of meth labs is going up exponentially. Mexican drug cartels now getting into it as the profit margin makes it worth while.

So far, your legislation doesn't seem to be working.

Deregulate everything. Let the weak Darwin themselves out of the gene pool. Coddling them by screwing over everyone else is a bad idea that even the staunchest Drug Warrior has gotta be able to see by now...

[A CA Guy]

I think everything is working well within our country Dead. The number of meth labs are way down, there are less chances of neighbors being blown up by these labs in homes.

Mexico is one big drug haven, so that is why we need the wall and security at the border.

Once we get that done, again there will be a big drop in what gets to the United States and we again will benefit.

Mexico already exports many of ther drug cartel people, violent criminals and con men to our lands, so we are in danger from Mexico and they need to be kept on their side of the playground.

Maybe if we spray paint on their side of the border WELCOME TO THE UNITED STATES they will go running back to Mexico?