Wrong solution

To enact a criminal statute requiring a signature for the local purchase of Sudafed is not much short of ludicrous.

A Google of Sudafed yields over 68,000 hits in .33 seconds. Any given day you can easily buy over the world wide net all the Sudafed and generic Sudafed you want and have it delivered to your door. So do you want enough police to police every internet transaction in the U.S.? And every Fed Ex and UPS delivery?

The problem here is not cough medicine, it's well-meaning folks who are always bellowing for statutory solutions to every social problem imaginable and the politicians who know a good line when they see it.

If you want criminal statutes for every possible way people can get themselves in trouble, then we'll have to quadruple your taxes when we triple the number of cops and the population in our prisons that are currently bulging with nonviolent offenders. Yes indeed, the U.S. has a drug problem and the problem is the expenditure of $40-60 billion annually on a miserably failed war.

Let's get our priorities straight here. Regardless of the false political spin, meth has a negligible impact on the Nebraska economy. Zilch. When and if the day comes that meth is costing us more than than meeting clean water acts and road maintenance, we'll take another look at jailing pharmacists who fail to get a signature for a 6-pack of cold tablets.