Tuesday, April 10, 2012

This Is Madness: Iodine Is Now A Controlled Substance?

There is a company that makes a product called Polar Pure, which is a backpacker's water purification system.  Some people think very highly of it, and consider it superior to the other options for this.  Unfortunately, because some of the methods for making meth involve the use of iodine, and Polar Pure uses iodine, guess what?  California and the DEA have decided that iodine is therefore a controlled substance, which will put Polar Pure out of business.

Meth: destroying everything it touches.

12 comments:

  1. Some of the iodine issue is nitrogen triiodide

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  2. Shouldn't some of the blame go to an over-reaching government?

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  3. Sounds like a lawsuit in the works.

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  4. How's that prohibition going for you?

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  5. You can have prohibition without having gross stupidity by government officials. Just because police officers sometimes abuse their authority doesn't argue for abolishing police. Just because some drivers drive drunk doesn't argue for abolishing automobiles.

    I suppose that I could also ask, "How's that culture built around intoxication going for you?"

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  6. Nitrogen triiodide has many fond high school memories for me...most of which involve a loud and unexpected bang.

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  7. "You can have prohibition without having gross stupidity by government officials."

    You have so much faith in government!

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  8. You can have prohibition without having gross stupidity by government officials.

    Are you really sure that's true in the USA?

    One of the many reasons I don't want us to "become European" is that I'm sure we'll do a much worse than usual job of it. And here we have a crazy policy (I mean, elemental iodine?!?!??!!) being driven at the very top (the DEA), there's no practical appealing of that, is there?

    Another way to put it: if you're right about the War on Drugs, where's the feedback in the system that allows for the curbing of "gross stupidity by government officials"?

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  9. Perhaps because I live in a state where gross stupidity is not a daily event for government officials. You notice that this came out of...California.

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  10. HGA:

    The more removed a government is from the people, the fewer checks and balances there are not just abuse, but downright stupidity. This is an argument for limiting the authority of the federal government to those areas and activities where state governments can't do the job. I'm hard pressed to see that DEA serves much of a useful function in that respect.

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  11. So are you prepared to stop supporting the Federal War on Drugs?

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  12. What makes you think that I have ever supported it? I support federalism. National authority to regulate drugs is pretty limited, although the Court in Raich wasn't prepared to admit it.

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