This was originally posted on www.micasims.com and the Conservative Edge, Leland Conway of 630 WLAP website.
The hearings were on Feb 3rd 2011
Today, Take Back Kentucky organized a Capitol Tour and Training, an effort at the State Capitol to get more Citizen Involvement in the legislative process. Most of the people that showed up were affiliated in some capacity with the TEA Party movement. Well, they certainly got an education on how the process works—not just from the scheduled speakers, but also from the happenings at the Capitol.
On today’s agenda were SB 45 and HB 281, identical bills that would require a prescription for cold and allergy medicines. Some of the citizens took the opportunity to sit in on the committees hearing the bills, and what was witnessed today was appalling. Leadership of both parties— Speaker of the House Greg Stumbo (D), Senate President David Williams (R), and Congressman Hal Rogers (R) were there as the first panel to speak in strong support of the bill. Giving away our rights and increasing our medical costs.
According to testimony today by a Colonel for the KSP, a “meth lab” is essentially a pop bottle with the ingredients in it. A “meth lab incident” is the number of times they come across one or more of these bottles. Note that “they come across” because according to the testimony, 90% of meth labs discovered are stumbled upon without trying (via other routine law enforcement activities, such as traffic stops or serving papers). We also learned that, for example, in a certain 3-county area there were over 40,000 buyers in one year and only 3 bottles found. In another county, there were over 30,000 buyers and only 1 bottle. According to the testimony today by the Colonel, they are not concerned about cutting meth use, just the dangerous manufacture of meth. They like Oregon’s law, which these bills are modeled after where the meth is mainly imported from Mexico as we learned in the committee. In fact we learned that they don’t really mind the “Mexican meth” as it is not as potent as the meth made in the U.S. It looks like just about every job in America is being outsourced and going overseas, at lower quality, including our black market drugs. This seems to be more about statistics and getting the meth labs out so we can feel like we are doing something about a problem when in fact we are not and making another problem worse, the immigration issue. As more and more things become illegal here, the more people are going to be willing to cross the border and sell it on the black market. Since the federal government and states started restricting the purchase of these products the use of meth in the US has gone up 34% nationally and in a state like ours where we electronically track the purchase it has gone up 65%. These new restrictive measures also draw more people into the culture of meth when before all it took was one person to be involved. There were of course some there to testify that this idea has been working, but as we can see it is not.
Some key points from today’s testimony, not direct quotes, but paraphrases.
Greg Stumbo: The War on Drugs will not go away, we just have to keep up with the changing battlefields and keep running it into different forms
Analysis: It’s futile but let’s keep wasting time and resources AKA taxpayer money
Hal Rogers: Companies making this ingredient should be responsible to see that it doesn’t get used illegally
Analysis: This may be one of the dumbest thing ever said, how can any business guarantee that won’t happen. Anything can be used to commit a crime, are we supposed to live in a nanny state….oh wait
David Williams: We can’t be a nanny state, but this rises to the level of severity that we have to be controlling; even passing this bill and thus making it available by prescription only will not solve the problem
Analysis: He contradicted himself there. Translation: I don’t like nanny states, except when I am the nanny, and even I being the nanny won’t make the problem go away, so just give up your rights so we can feel good about what we have done and I can sleep easy at night knowing I tried.
More from the “Colonel”: The imagination is the only limit to the things people will use to make drugs, but passing this bill will make it harder to make.
Analysis: Echoing Stumbo, we can’t stop it but we must try…I just fear from this statement we might start legislating against the imagination, after all it’s for the children and anything to keep them safe.
Despite these optimistic yet cautious points made above there were some that seemed to think this law will completely eliminate the “meth manufacturing” problem even though we already know that is not the case after about 5 years of implementing these type of solutions, and in fact is causing the exact opposite to occur.
Speaking of the children, what really took the cake though was learning how eager politicians are to exploit kids who don’t even know all the ins and outs of why they are there. They were paraded around in the Capitol Rotunda chanting slogans and holding signs to drum up emotional support for an apparently unpopular bill; as of this writing a WHAS 11 poll has opposition to this bill coming in at 91%. When we left we saw that these kids had been bused in from Elliot, Pike and Laurel Counties. So the political proponents of these bills are hypocrites in regard to caring for the children’s education so long as they can use them as political tools and use taxpayer money to transport them for it. Taxpayer dollars spent to manipulate children and further a political agenda. The slogan “it’s for the children” is getting a little old, especially when we see it eroding away the rights of the Citizens because of a few stupid people. Note that all these counties are in Congressmen Hal Rogers’ 5TH Congressional district.
At one point during the testimony a rather confusing exchange took place that suggests that not everything in these bills are yet known, and this is just one more instance where unintended consequences can occur. A committee member asked the Colonel a hypothetical question of what would happen if you pull over a tourist from say Florida who has Sudafed without a prescription. The Colonel looks quite dumbfounded for an uncomfortable extended period of time, after which he finally agreed there would have to be some consideration to solve that problem. Speaker Stumbo tried to provide cover by suggesting that there are provisions in the bill regarding reasonableness. However, the committee member was not satisfied considering we are creating a law about making this product illegal without a prescription, so he tossed out another hypothetical about say a school environment where someone gives their prescribed Sudafed to someone who needed, would that not be a crime. Speaker Stumbo replied, I guess it would be a crime, but nobody really reports that anyway. The committee member did not seem comfortable with this whole exchange as it seemed to indicate that some of the application of this law will be left up to law enforcement discretion. Unfortunately for those that would want some clarification on this exchange KET did not record the House Judiciary Committee, as they already got pretty much the same testimony from the earlier Senate hearing.
The final question from the House hearing was where does meth use line up against other drugs in Kentucky? According to those for these bills it was number one, according to those opposed, prescription drugs where number one. However, someone happened to have an LRC study that showed it came in at less than 4% of the state’s total drug problem.
Next I guess we will have to get a prescription to do plumbing as many plumbing products have the chemicals necessary to make meth as well. If you have a really bad plumbing problem I guess you will have to wait 30 days between purchases to get that clog cleared up, just like you have to wait to get the congestion cleared up.
Interesting news from the Political Grapevine; the side story to this event is that Pat Davis wife of US Representative Geoff Davis of the 4TH Congressional District was there to testify against it. We are convinced she has genuine concerns about this bill. However, there is a political rift forming between Rogers and Davis, and this might be a reason why. Looks like the RINOS and the Conservatives in the Republican Party are starting to reveal themselves hopefully this will prove to yield good dividends for the Republican Party in the form of the citizens taking it back and giving voters a clear choice in elections, like in the Republican Primary with TEA Party backed Phil Moffett who has already come out with a statement against these bills and David Williams the establishment candidate and career politician that seems to be ready to compromise conservative principles and the rights, liberties and financial security of the Citizens of the Commonwealth of