> With explanation in abstract that its easier to buy meth than pseudoephedrine.

People may laugh at this, as they should since it is an absurd situation, but this isn't entirely wrong.

Neither my wife or I drive and during the pandemic she gave up her license after getting an appointment at the DOL was difficult. Both of us carry US passport cards as our ID.

This has resulted in several situations where we've been turned down for purchasing restricted items like alcohol or drugs containing pseudoephedrine, particularly the latter, because a passport card can't be scanned by the usual point of sale systems. There are a couple of places in Seattle that are happy to accept a passport card but even at them it's sometimes been dependent on who is working the counter that day.

Gotta chime in on this. Seattle (in general a great place) has some pretty horrible things re: purchasing alcohol. Idiot/mis-placed store/bar-workers who only want a state ID. My U.S. passport=NO. My U.N. passport=NO.

Freakin' weird.

Edit: I worked at Boeing for eight years, very often in a sec/reserved area. My passport was good there. Buying booze down the street from [Boeing] plant 2, no.

> My U.N. passport=NO.

I wouldn't blame a regular store clerk for not knowing what a UN Lassiez-Passier is, especially since it doesn't have the word "passport" in the name. But a passport, especially one from their own country, definitely ought to be recognized.

Not entirely unique to Seattle, in my experience.

Seared into my head is my experience of trying to buy alcohol in Boston back in 2009, when I was in town for a wedding. I had just turned 21 so buying alcohol was still novel and exciting. I had multiple bars and liquor stores refuse my valid Illinois license, forcing me to hand alcohol to my father to purchase, and find shady bars that wouldn’t card me. It was extremely frustrating to have to rely on such tactics despite being legally allowed to purchase alcohol.

When I lived in downtown Seattle in 2010 I had no problems using a passport to buy alcohol. (Unfortunately, routinely carrying around my passport resulted in me losing it, and replacing a lost passport is a giant pain in the ass)

Weird. Even during covid when I was wearing a mask, I never got ID checked at a store in WA. It seems much laxer here than in other states I've lived in.

Why not get a non-motorist ID card? Every US state has these; here's Washington's: https://www.dol.wa.gov/driverslicense/gettingidcard.html

We are aware of these. The reason is: Because unless you get the "enhanced" version, due to the ridiculous REAL ID situation you have to have another card anyway. For me in particular, where I work operates a medical clinic in a facility owned by the federal government so a non-enhanced card doesn't get me in the door, but a passport card does.

For my wife, it's because she has even less tolerance for paperwork than I do and it's easier to just go to the pharmacies we know have their heads bolted on straight than it is to gather up all of the stuff and go to the overworked and harried DOL.

Many Americans have difficulty obtaining ID, because they cannot afford or cannot obtain the underlying documents that are a prerequisite to obtaining government-issued photo ID card.

Underlying documents required to obtain ID cost money, a significant expense for lower-income Americans. The combined cost of document fees, travel expenses and waiting time are estimated to range from $75 to $175.

The travel required is often a major burden on people with disabilities, the elderly, or those in rural areas without access to a car or public transportation. In Texas, some people in rural areas must travel approximately 170 miles to reach the nearest ID office.

That's true and all, but the person I was replying to already has a federal passport, which suffices for all levels of state ID.

Do you have any specific citations on that?

I find it a credible claim. There was a story a few years back which made the rounds that ... turned out to be a case of fraud.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/articl...

https://www.inquirer.com/news/mark-damico-johnny-bobbitt-kat...

That said, given frictions of obtaining ID and necessity of having same, I could well believe that this is an issue.

It can be quite a headache.

I ran into a guy online that couldn't obtain an ID, period. The only form of ID he had was a driver's license. His doctor pulled it (legitimately, but needlessly--there was no question he was incapable of driving) leaving him with nothing. Where he lives that left one option--get a birth certificate. The application must be signed--something he's no longer capable of doing. The only other route would be to show up in person at the right office--multiple states away, a trip that would be medically ill-advised.

Note that he's educated and not poor, this is purely a problem of the system not handling the oddball cases. That state needs to be clobbered with a clue-by-4, if you pull a driver's license you should issue the person a non-driver's ID!

We have also run into a problem. When my wife was naturalized a hyphen got inserted in her name on her naturalization certificate, it wasn't noticed at the time. Almost everything is in her name as intended but social security saw the hyphen and would not relent. Even after we legally changed her name to rid it of the hyphen they were digging in their heels on changing the records. At this point we *think* the Real ID stuff is going to work, but the virus interfered. For the occasional place that won't accept her expired ID we use her passport card. (She doesn't drive, there's no issue of driving on an expired license.)

All you had to do is ask for a free state ID card.

- It’s Federal law.

I don’t know why people keep forking over money for state ID. It’s a state government scam.

> Underlying documents required to obtain ID cost money

Err, no they don't. At least not with any of the IDs I've gotten in California for the past several years....

The county in California where I was born charges $32 for a birth certificate. Most (all?) of the proof of address documents also require you to spend money. If you already have multiple utility bills in your name it's NBD, but if you live with someone it could be a pain in the ass.

Then a DL itself is another $40. A non-driving ID is like $30, although there's discounts depending on age and income.

Where can you get a certified birth certificate for free?

Yes, but you live in the People's Republic of California.

I'm next door in Nevada.

Scraping together the required documentation for proving her address was problematic. I set up the utilities, I'm the one that deals with them, they're just in my name. She doesn't like dealing with that sort of stuff and at the time most of it was done her English (she learned her first word of English at 43) would have added needless complexity.

Even the property records are problematic on that--we put our house into an estate-planning trust. The correct titling of the property has the trust and then both of our names--but the system only *displays* two lines. Thus it shows the trust and then my name, hers gets omitted.

I believe this is the key element:

> she gave up her license after getting an appointment at the DOL was difficult.

I'm not sure what DOL is a reference to; however I now many individuals struggled to get appointments at the Secretary of State (SoS) and that is also where one (at least where I live) would need to get a non-motorist ID. Same amount of frustration / time spent to get a non-motorist ID as it would be to renew your driver license.

DOL = Washington Department of Licensing: https://www.dol.wa.gov/

DOL ~= DMV = RMV

In Illinois, it's the Secretary of State's Driver Services office. In Texas, it's the Department of Public Safety, and your plates may be in one building/location and your driver's license/state ID in another part of town.

Maybe the most honest state is Missouri, where plates, stickers for them, and your driver's license are all handled by the state's Department of Revenue.

Would that not still require an in-person visit that they've already stated was not possible? I'd assume the state would require a new photo for a new ID at the least to make an in-person visit required. Probably need new fingerpritns as well (if that's something WA does).

Society wouldn't function if people weren't willing to bend the rules.

Not really sure what you're on about here. There's a time and place where bending the rules is possible. Attempting to get a government issued ID and not following the basic rules of showing up in person is not really one of them in my book.

But why get one? A passport/passport card is a _better_ ID document in almost every way. State non-motorist IDs should really cease to exist and we should increase access to passport cards

Except for the way of not being scannable at point of purchase machines that was clearly stated. So if the one point qualifying for "almost every way" is hitting right out of the gate, then it doesn't seem to be that viable of an option.

>State non-motorist IDs should really cease to exist

State non-motorist IDs are some of the only IDs available to non-citizens who live in the US and don't drive

Don't they presumably have a US alien ID (Green Card or otherwise) and/or a foreign passport? What other documents could they use to establish identity to be able to get a State ID?

>Don't they presumably have a US alien ID (Green Card or otherwise) and/or a foreign passport

There are millions of visa-holders who live in the US but don't have green cards. Carrying around a foreign passport for everyday identification is an absolutely terrible idea because of the risk of theft or loss. Losing a visa-containing foreign passport can necessitate getting an emergency travel document from your foreign-country consulate, traveling back to your home country, getting a new passport, getting an appointment at the US embassy in your home country, getting a new visa issued in your new passport, then finally traveling back to the US. The whole process could take weeks or months and cost thousands of dollars.

My wife is foreign-born, but was in the US as a non-resident when our hearts turned proximity into much more. Since she was already here the whole application process took place in the US. It was just under two years from when we married until she had a green card. (And note that there is also a delay from being granted a green card to actually having one in one's possession.)

Foreign passport and non-driver's ID were her only options--and passports are a nuisance to carry around and a PITA if lost/stolen.

(And, yes, I think that just under two years bit was not by chance. They were definitely looking for signs of fraud and I'm sure they finally approved it just before the point where they would have had to issue a permanent one rather than a conditional one.)

And, a government photo ID is required to get a passport. A state ID is very useful for non-driving citizens, as well as non-citizens.

As someone who moved to Seattle during the pandemic, I knew when you mentioned getting an appointment with the DOL that it was probably WA. I had to go out to Wenatchee (2 hour drive each way) to get my license because everywhere else was booked.

Yeah, many years ago my wife had a fair problem at a bank because the teller didn't like being presented with a passport. "Just bring your driver's license!" Hey, you've already seen and rejected her non-driver's ID (at the time the non-driver IDs didn't have expiration dates and the bank wouldn't take any ID without an expiration date) and here you can't have both a driver's license and a non-driver's ID. It took getting a manager involved.

Now, had this happened a few years earlier before she was naturalized.... While her passport did have the standard English labels it was mostly written in bird tracks.

> People may laugh at this

Not to spoil the joke, but the paper by "O. Hai" and "I. B. Hakkenshit" is satire--I would be absolutely gobsmacked if anyone is actually doing this.

Right.

Here's a copy of the paper, if anyone is interested:

https://maggiemcneill.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/synthesizi...

The process described is true, but the authors are anonymous - and rightly snarky

My favorite REAL ID compliant ID to use is my Global Entry card.

A divers license or state issue ID (much easier to get if you get it before you surrender/expire you DL) is just a defacto standard in the US.

The people who check IDs for medications and alcohol are trained to check DL cards, not passports. It's not surprising that using an ID different from 99.9% of other people causes issues. Although my friend who was a student from Germany never had any issues...

lol https://improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume19/v19i3/Pse...

"While N-methylamphetamine itself is a powerful decongestant, it is less desirable in a medical setting because of its severe side effects and addictive properties... Other side effects may include violent urges or, similarly, the urge to be successful in business or finance."

Authored by O. Hai, and I. B. Hakkenshit

Thank you for making my day.

It would be interesting to see if there were any reliable stats on how many, if any, people were caught by the ID check laws trying to manufacture from pseudoephedrine, because even at the height of the meth panic that engendered the laws something like 95% of pseudoephedrine outside of a handful of high-risk areas was very obviously not being used for any illegal purposes.

I doubt it caught people. That wasn't the purpose. Rather, it deterred them from buying up a bunch of it and thus got rid of the meth labs. And I think that's a good thing--while I am solidly on the side of drug legalization I don't want amateurs making hazmat sites all over the place.

Pseudoephedrine is still available -behind the counter-. You literally just have to ask the pharmacist for it.

Let’s not turn grad students having a laugh into an actual statement on public policy.

Which means it's not available outside of the pharmacist counter's more-limited hours. And there's often an additional line to wait in before acquiring. And, as another thread points out, extra ID requirements.

So how exactly do the costs/benefits on this "public policy" sum out?

Benefits:

• some grandstanding politicians enjoy the superficial appearance of being "tough on meth"

Costs:

• Americans waste $billions on an ineffective placebo decongestant

• Legitimate manufacturers of a working medicine, pseudoephedrine hcl, lose sales due to extra cost/effort/stigma associated with the purchase. They shift real productive resources – inputs & worker hours – to making & marketing placebos instead.

• Larger cross-border criminal organizations – of the kind that regularly murder politicians south-of-the-border – grow in market-share, sophistication, & power.

• Meth continues to be available at high volume, & low costs, unaffected by the pseudoephedrine limits.

• Recent meth formulations – likely prompted by the limits on the pseudoephedrine-process – seem to create a stronger & more-destructive addiction among abusers: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/11/the-new...

If we don't listen to 'grad students having a laugh' who are pointing out the wasteful absurdities of 'public policy', we'll keep such nonsense destructive rules indefinitely.

The 'serious folks' among politicians & suited 'public-policy' types are derelict in their duties.

> Larger cross-border criminal organizations – of the kind that regularly murder politicians south-of-the-border – grow in market-share, sophistication, & power.

Are you suggesting my neighborhood friendly drug dealer could hook me up with some real sudafed? Might be nicer than trying to get it from the pharmacy when I need it.

Not sure if you're joking, but he's suggesting that if bulk pseudoephedrine were still available, cartel meth wouldn't have 99% of the market like it does today.

Because yeah, your neighborhood dealer would make his own meth and would probably have lots of Sudafed.

Around here, you pick up a card from the shelf with a picture of the product you want, then wait in line for the pharmacist. Then they say "Sorry, we're out of that one, what else do you want", "I don't know, what do you have", "sigh... here's what we have left...".

Then you show your drivers license and the pharmacist records it and you pay and finally walk out with your sudafed. If you want to buy several boxes because it's allergy season, well too bad, you can't buy 2 boxes today, you have to come back tomorrow for the second one.

It's actually easier to buy as a prescription, then the Dr can write you a prescription for any amount you need/want.

My state attempted to make pseudoephedrine require a prescription. One of the state lawmakers that was opposed was a doctor and he cited studies where phenylephrine was less effective than placebo. I wrote to my representative, who called me after voting for the bill to tell me that some sheriff told him phenylephrine is equally effective.

Every time you buy the stuff from the pharmacist, they're logging the purchase in a national DB and you're signing an acknowledgement that it's a huge felony to go beyond the limit. But they never tell you where you are vs the limit, and the limits aren't clearly stated. End result: chilling effect.

My mom timed her purchases incorrectly (family of 5 with mom shopping for all at the time) and went past the limit. After that she was flagged and had to have an actual doctor's prescription in order to purchase pseudoephedrine for 6-12 months. That is a HUGE hurdle for most people, and doctors don't want to see people who have cold symptoms. Heck, I was turned away from a CVS Minute Clinic recently because I had COVID like symptoms in the last 7 days. As in refused to see me, even though I had recently tested negative for COVID and had a fever + persistent cough.

Good to see your representative was getting his information on the effectiveness of medicine from a cop and ignoring the doctor. Emblematic of modern America.

“I asked a cop about how effective an OTC medicine is” is an absolutely insane thing for anyone to say, let alone a legislator. Sadly it does not seem like such behavior receives the social opprobrium it deserves.

You don't just ask the pharmacist for it. You have to produce an acceptable form of identification that can be used to record the transaction in the universal database. It's unavailable to anyone who doesn't have one of those.

If you don't have any form of identification, getting pseudoephedrine from a pharmacy is probably not too high on your to-do list.

I suspect you're wrong. How many people do you think would prefer not having medication to having medication?

He’s definitely wrong. Sometime last year I had a cold and I know pseudoephedrine helps me.

I ran out and wanted to buy some at the local cvs. Now, I’m not a US citizen but I’ve been here a few years already and am a permanent resident. I do not have a US state ID or a US driving license, and in my many years it has _never_ been a problem. Everyone was always happy with my green card as my ID - bars, domestic flights, international flights back to USA, bank account openings etc. But not for purchasing pseudoephedrine at CVS…

I literally stood there with my green card and my European passport and was begging the cvs clerk to sell it to me, but the told me it’s impossible, system doesn’t accept those IDs (and they tried, even showed me their computer screen). And so I had to leave empty handed and with a runny nose, and came back later with an American friend to buy it…

Makes sense. I stand corrected. I was under the assumption you could use a passport.

> Let's not turn grad students having a laugh into an actual statement on public policy.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but... at least this you can't stop me from doing.

In my state, I'm able to walk down the road to a 24/7 chain pharmacy and buy pseudoephedrine whenever I want. The pharmacy, in combination with the state, uses ID to regulate how much an individual may purchase over some time frame(s).

Most doctors will just write you a prescription and you can get it delivered to your home. Super easy.

Same here. But I think the edge cases are worth listening to as well. Green card residents, for instance. Sudafed is kind of a lifesaver for me at times and I feel fortunate to be able to buy it relatively easily.

The US would elect a baby-eating space alien from Tau Ceti VI as president if Zbleqq'takkx's primary platform plank was "make it so you can buy real Sudafed without a lot of hassle and faff."

Yeah, US voters do seem to like electing presidents for things only Congress has the power to do. Of course, presidents also like proposing things they can't do.

Presidents' main differences are on foreign policy which is the one thing nobody asks them about.

I don't about anywhere else but the only thing you have to do is walk up to the pharmacist and show an ID. I couldn't care less. I'm buying like a couple of weeks worth. I've had the same process in two different states, and not sure why it's a big deal? We can't have nice things because meth cooks were coming with shopping bags and stealing it all.

The cartels end up selling $200 bottles of cough medicine and making more money that way. Then they lobby to keep it illegal.

Is it also possible to buy meth and turn it into ephedrine? That would be phenomenal

Are chemistry papers describing the synthesis of methamphetamine illegal?

No.

1st Amendment?