Carded for Cough Syrup: Good Intentions Do Not Good Legislation Make

I went to the store with my family this evening. It was a standard trip with a run of the mill goal in mind. We had to purchase some groceries and some children's cough medicine. My children each have nasty coughs right now, but are otherwise the picture of health. Per the instructions of the pediatricians we've seen in the past, cough medicine is not administered during the day unless my children are utterly miserable, but rather it is given at night if their coughing is keeping them from sleeping. My husband and I both thought it would be an uneventful and quick errand.

Once we retrieved our purchases and got to the checkout stand a rather disturbing thing happened. The cashier rang up the children's Robitussin and then promptly asked me for my birth date. I was taken aback, but rattled of the month day and year that I was born. She then asked me to see my photo i.d. I thought, "Hold the phone! I'm being carded? For children's cough medicine?!" According to the cashier it is becoming mandatory to show photo i.d. when purchasing children's cold medicine. So into the database went my drivers license number, I can only assume to track how much cold medicine I'm purchasing and how often.

It was difficult enough when they banned the active ingredients found in the old Tylenol Flu. Many adults will still complain that the new remedies are nowhere near as effective. For me personally, I figured I could adapt. Their reasoning was to keep those people out there that decided to take something helpful and make it into something harmful from doing so. I could live with that. Though the debate still rages on about whether or not the banning of medicines containing pseudoephedrine has really had the hard hitting effect they hoped it would on the home made methamphetamine labs that have been and continue to be such a problem in many parts of the United States.

Now however this is beginning to affect not only my children, but other people's children. How much pseudoephedrine can a bottle of children's cough medicine really contain? Is this really a necessary measure or is this over-legislation at it's finest? The answer is none. At least in the case of Robitussin Cough and Cold, inspection of the ingredients reveals that it contains the active ingredients Chlorpheniramine, which is an antihistamine and Dextromethorphan HBr which is a cough suppressant. I also found it quite interesting that an on-line search turned up absolutely no information on this new bit of legislation.

I see this going a very bad direction. If people have trouble obtaining decent medical care for their children, and now may be prevented from buying something as simple as over the counter cold medicine for their children, some not so practical home remedies may begin to raise their ugly heads again. More legislation is not going to stop or even slow the illicit drug trade. Only the efforts of conscientious citizens and law enforcement will be able to do that. This piece of legislation will not hurt the meth labs, but it does have the potential to harm our children. Where do we draw the line when it comes to how many controls we will allow our government to place on us before we as citizens start making efforts to police our own neighborhoods and let criminals know that their behavior is not tolerable? Or will we simply look the other way when the proverbial "bad apple" spoils things for the whole lot of us?