Finally, The Government Understands the Real Danger

The government appears to have unwittingly caught on to the truth: the common cold is far more dangerous than terrorism. How do I know? As of this afternoon, I have had to show my ID more times to get rid of this blasted cold than to fly across the country, and that was before the identification shakedown to get nasal decongestant.

Since airlines have cut back to what appears to be a national average of 2/3 of a ticket agent per airport, no one checks ID when you get your boarding pass anymore. Quietly, over the past few years, they have reduced the airport ID checks down to one flash with your boarding pass at the TSA checkpoint as the person makes sure that your driver's license name matches your ticket name. Emp. Peng. and I flew from Columbus to Seattle and back, showing our identification a total of twice.

Coincidentally, that is exactly how many times I had to show my ID to buy 8 ounces of cold remedy. Since I tend to treat symptoms as I get them, I eschew the gazillion-in-one cold syrups in favor of ones that do one thing. The thing I need. I don't need to take a fever reducer if I am not running a fever. During the course of this cold, I have had chest congestion and a nagging cough, so I separately bought a bottle of expectorant and a bottle of cough suppressant, carded both times to prove that I am not a teenager looking to get 'faced on dextromethophan.

With chest congestion and cough having already put me on par with cross-country travel in terms of ID checks (although, thankfully, I did not need to have my shoes x-rayed at the Kroger pharmacy counter), I decided that my head congestion had become intolerable. I could actually feel the snot backup from the outside of my face, and the combination of painful congestion and a general inability to breathe through the standard oxygen-intake portals was leading me to emit a pathetic puppy whimper in my sleep and keep Emp. Peng. up half the night.

Time was, the remedy for this was to go to a store, pick up a box of Sudafed, pay for it and leave. That time was before someone figured out that you could use Sudafed to make methamphetamine and the DEA turned it into a List I chemical (basically, harmless enough on its own, but can be used to make controlled substances). Now, to get the Sudafed that contains pseudoephedrine, you have to show ID and fill out a form with your name, address and DOB and time and date of purchase, which will be kept on record for 2 years. Plus, you can only buy 9 grams of the stuff in any given month. That last one is not too onerous for the average cold sufferer, since it represents 300 doses. If you are that congested, you may have bigger problems than maxing out your Sudafed allotment. Nonetheless, that does mean that a three-symptom cold requires more ID check than a round trip airline flight.

You can, of course, walk into a store and get the new pseudoephedrine-free formulation of Sudafed with no questions or ID required. However, I find it telling that retailers and manufacturers have chosen to keep the old decongestant on the market, even with the inventory controls and extra work for the pharmacist that stocking it entails. I have to assume that, from a purely business perspective, if the new stuff worked as well as the old, no one would bother with the added work and expense of keeping the old stuff on hand, and the manufacturers would simply stop making it. But they don't, seriously implying that the new stuff could be about as effective as the blister pack it comes in.

Which is how I found myself this afternoon handing over the details of my identity to a lady at the pharmacy counter in exchange for nasal decongestant. When I am sick enough to need a decongestant, I'm not fooling around with the namby-pamby stuff. There ought to be some provision in the control of pseudoephedrine that, if you have to dig through pockets with more than half a travel pack of used, snotty tissues to get your ID, the pharmacist can assume you need the drug for legitimate nasal decongesting purposes and you are exempt from the background check.