Common Sense

Drug War Casualty: Common Sense

Along with truth and honest debate, we have often lost common sense. In 1970, the government began drug scheduling – putting substances in one of five categories to determine the degree of regulation. Currently, marijuana, heroin and hallucinogens are Schedule I – illegal under all circumstances – cocaine is schedule II, and so forth.

In 1986, so as to consolidate the drug war and cover any loopholes, Congress passed the Controlled Substances Analog Act. This abominable law targeted so-called "designer drugs." This meant that any chemical that was molecularly similar, or similar in effect, to any Schedule I or II drug would immediately be treated as Schedule I. You could see the absurdity in this, since what constitutes a similar effect is somewhat subjective and the government has a hard time deciphering such things fairly. Why is LSD illegal when you can get atropine and belladonna, mandrake and other plants that do something "similar" enough? And what constitutes similarities in molecular structure is a somewhat useless question, when we consider that a simple modification can turn nutmeg into a hallucinogen.

Whereas before, government pursued enumerated drugs, now we were moving to a day when drugs would only be safe if they were exempted from prohibition.

Occasionally, the drug war has singled out relatively benign substances in addition to the regulars. For those of you who use Sudafed, you will sympathize with this. I find that pseudoephedrine is one of the few over-the-counters that works for me. It clears up my sinuses. I am a big fan.

But now you must go through an Orwell novel just to get the stuff. You have to show your ID and sign your name to a federal database so they can assure you don’t buy more than your monthly allowance. The idea is this will stop people from manufacturing meth.