Yet another reason not to live in Oregon
Writing by treason on Sunday, 31 of July , 2005 at 7:59 pm
I noticed that the Oregon House (and I’m not talking about a mildewy Victorian) just voted on a law that will require Oregonians with colds and allergies to obtain prescriptions before they can go to Walgreens and pick up a bottle of relief. This, of course, means a trip to doctor. And everyone knows that by the time you score an appointment you’re over whatever it is you’re suffering from and you don’t need to buy any medicine. This also means that people will pass on the appointment and go straight to urgent care and emergency rooms. Little kids with compound fractures and teenagers with bullet wounds will be in line behind someone with the sniffles. As someone who spent five years in a part of Northern California that is for all intents and purposes considered the Pacific Northwest, I had a cold that started in October 1977 and lasted through June 1982. If I had needed to go to a doctor every time I wanted to buy a Corecidin tablet, I would have dropped out of school and moved to the desert to live in a tent and write books about homemade explosives.
The one thing we Americans have absolute control over is how we treat our cold and allergy symptoms. Whether it’s an over-the-counter antihistamine, an echinacea-laced lozenge, a spray we snort up our noses, or a nicely aged Scotch, we choose how we’re going to deal with our illnesses. And then we talk about it endlessly, recommending our methods to anyone who reaches for a Kleenex. (My college professors swore by large doses of hard liquor. This didn’t relieve any cold symptoms, but it made you less self-conscious about wiping snot off your face and coughing up copious amounts of phlegm in public.)
How ’bout just cracking down on the criminals who use common cold products (namely, decongestants that contain pseudoephedrine) to manufacture methamphetamine instead of punishing innocent people who just want to feel good enough to go to work in the morning? To avoid the hassle, people will forego medication and what was a cold will now be bronchitis or pneumonia. Well, there goes the American economy. Perhaps the teachers unions can do something useful for a change and call this discrimination. After all, it’s our teachers who are often constant victims of the common cold, spread by their snot-nosed students. Teachers will be out of the classroom in record numbers, sitting in doctors’ offices, while substitutes take over the public school system.
Hmmmm. Then again, there might be an upside to this whole story.
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