A few morons ...spoil it for the whole bunch...

Since the 1982 Tylenol murders, just one idiot (and a few copycats after him/her) has made life a hassle for the rest of us, adding literally millions of hours of aggravation to our collective lifetimes. The Tylenol scare led to the advent of "tamper proof" wrapping on everything from Tylenol to soup. Since the Tylenol scare, the rest of us have been forced to live in a "tamper proof" cage, and millions have been forced into unnecessary inconvenience due to the actions of a few scum-of-the-earth morons. The Tylenol killer has yet to be found, but you can bet that when the scumbag finally does turn up, I will be at the front of the line, waiting to flip the switch to Ol' Sparky" as that friggen scumbag ne'erdowell is spirited off to his date with the netherworld.

Tonight I was again reminded in a big way of the inconvenience that law-abiding citizens have to endure courtesy of your local neighborhood degenerate asswipe. We have two seasonal allergy sufferers in our household. Yours truly, thankfully, is not one of them, but your's truly's wife is. And when your's truly's wife is suffering, everybody suffers. So, being the good husband that I am, I make my way to the friendly neighborhood Walgreens, duly following my wife's request to bring home a stash of 24-hour Claritin D. Little did I foresee that my foray into the apothecary for some non-prescription allergy medicine would entail jumping through hoops that would make going through Checkpoint Charlie seem like a walk in the Park. First, you can't buy Claritin D, a non-prescription medicine, off the rack anymore. You have to take the appropriate ticket to the pharmacy counter. That's where you encounter a pimply-faced assistant who apparently can't read: "What would you like, sir?" she asks. "Two Claritin D, 24 hour, 10 tablet packs, just like the tickets read." So she turns and proceeds to pick out a Claritin D 12-hour 5-pack from the rack behind the counter. "No, that would be two 24-hour Claritin D, 10-packs ma'am, just like what's on the tickets I handed you," I say, as I direct her to where a package of same is plainly labeled, right in front of her eyes. As she takes a package of the desired product off of the rack, a puzzled look returns to her face. "It appears we have only one Claritin D 24-hour 10-tablet package left, sir (even though there appears to be over a hundred tickets for the product in the cold & allergy section); How about the Wallitin D? It's the same formula." "No thanks," I explain to her that in the state of allergic suffering that my wife is currently in, she will not settle for cheap imitations. "Just give me one pack instead of two." That's not the end of it. Not by a longshot. She needs my driver's license. She takes down my address, and she makes me sign a piece of paper, confirming my purchase. On the same pad of paper are the names of hundreds of other "suspects." I feel like a little old lady who's been shaken down at the airport while Muslim male extremists between the ages of 18 and 49 stroll by unmolested. I'm now on the list of possible lowlife scumbags who buy cold & allergy medicines for the express purpose of cooking meth so that other scumbags can take it and produce offspring that will give a school psychologist like me more and more opportunities for job security. Yippee. Nice to be grouped in with scumbags like that, isn't it?

So a jaunt to the drug store that may have taken five minutes, tops, now takes 15. Given that under the best of circumstances, you have a limit of two packages per visit, and given the fact that I have two adult allergy sufferers in my household, I will now need to spend around an extra 360 minutes (around 6 extra hours per year) to pick up cold medicine, just because some low-life scumbags who are loathe to earning an honest buck misuse an otherwise legal product. Multiply that by the tens to hundreds of thousands of Minnesotans who regularly buy nonprescription allergy and cold medications, do the meth math, and you've got the idea.

Thank you nannystate government for once again inconveniencing thousands just to make it a little bit tougher for a few scumwads to make a dishonest living. Kinda makes you want to level your neighborhood crack house, doesn't it?