Dichotomy, or, let's talk about drugs.

[kistha]

So.

Here I am a user in good standing with my medical insurance. A good person who's never been convicted of any kind of crime, much less a felony involving drugs. Seriously, prescription medications have nearly killed me, I'm not about to experiment. And yet when I visit the pharmacy for a nonprescription drug.....

I also have allergies that none of the prescription drugs work for - or they have scary, scary intolerable side effects, or best of all they are both. So I'm on over the counter Drixoral 12 hour. I take one a day, and it's not very good for me, but I can't function easily without them. Drixoral's main ingredient is Pseudoephedrine which is also a main component of Crystal Meth. So every time I go to the drugstore, I get to feel like a drug addict. They take down my driver's license information, my address, my phone number. Then they take 15 minutes to check the hand written logs to discover if I am indeed allowed to have my antihistamine. It's irritating, it's time consuming, and it's demeaning, and I'd love to see a study proving that it's cut into the production and selling of Crystal Meth. Oh, and Sudafed even changed their main decongestant to a non Psuedoephedrine formula - which is where they got their name. Must be cutting into business, this documentation so I can't be the only one who's annoyed.

Then take my Insurance company...

I'm on birth control. My doctor writes out my prescription for 3 months at a time, so that I can choose to only have my period every three months. (Whoo-hoo) Considering that my period has the nickname of "Assassin of Joy" for it's habit of waiting for or arriving weeks earlier/later in order to ruin that vacation (like one on a house boat, or a tropical island) you planned this is a pretty important function for me. But.....my insurance won't fill it for 3 months at a time, only 1 month at a time. Why you ask? Because they want me to get it in the mail, and if I mail order it, they will fill it three months at a time. WTF?


So, I can't buy a nonprescription drug, meaning that it isn't a drug that needs to be regulated, over the counter without my ID, and a mini background check every time I do make the purchase. But I should get controlled, regulated prescriptions sent to me through the mail. Which, I might add is far from secure. Especially once it is in the mailbox - the typical house mailbox in a cluster with no locks, and not close to anyone's house.

Yeah. Whatever.

Have I mentioned lately that common sense isn't so common?

Comments

[sgoilear.livejournal.com]

The program started 01/01/06, I believe, under WAC 246-889-070 (and RCW 69.43.170). It's a "pilot program" to see if tracking these purchases will curb crime in WA state. Never mind the records can be hand-written, which doesn't seem like it'll do a lot if you buy at other locations.

All hail our "democratic" governor and "democratic" legislature. :P~~