Outlaw Colds
I just came down with my favorite yearly cold. Starts with a raw throat, moves into a cough, then comes the open nasal faucets. I get this cold so predictably that as soon as that first scratch in the throat shows up, I know exactly what’s coming next. I don’t even whine and whimper any more — I figure, let’s get this over with and Move On.
I used to dose up with cold meds, pull the cover over my head and go into a sort of rhinoviral hibernation. But the past few years my ‘effective’ cold remedies, the ones guaranteed to shut off the snot valve, have disappeared. I’ve been told you can get them ‘behind the counter’, sign a form, take an oath, leave a security deposit and go home with the real stuff. Oddly, my pharmacists tell me they no longer stock these. For this, I want to thank the Meth Heads of the world who stole or bought over the counter meds used to cook Crank. Nasty stuff, Crank. Addictive, hard to quit, ruins the user’s health real quick.
I grew up in the ‘60’s. Every drug fad that came along was, and I quote by heart the police and medical experts, “the most dangerously addictive drug we’ve ever seen.” To stop this latest scourge, they have seen fit to hide or abandon any reasonably effective cold pills.
The Meth Heads now are stealing copper wire, metal signs, bronze church bells and sculpture in my little park, about anything metal not bolted down that they can cut into pieces and sell to scrap yards. A lot of sculptures in the area are lost to these pillheads, at pennies to the dollar. It’s time to say enough is really enough. It’s time, I say, to legalize a drug for them. So we can have our own drugs back!
As far as stealing sculptures, maybe a mandatory art appreciation class before their script can be filled. Each time. I know we hate government and government regulation these days, all us Don’t Tread On Me Yahoos, but remind yourselves: we let them outlaw our cold pills and now only outlaws have cold pills. Now is the time to ask ourselves the Hard Question — will meth cure my cold?