Mother Jones: If Big Companies Are Against the Drug War, It Must be a Good Thing (Meth Edition)
Mother Jones is all for arresting parents of young children for their drug use, and propping up the medical-industrial complex by requiring a doctor's legal permission (and concomitant fees) for being able to buy what is now, in most places in America, over-the-counter cold medicine that contains pseudoephedrine, which can be turned into methamphetamine at home. (Obligatory Breaking Bad reference here.)

The story is largely in the interpretive pocket of the cops who cooperated with it, and takes it as a given that if someone is trying to make a buck off of selling cold medicine, there must be something sinister about that that a decent progressive should want stopped, toot sweet.
The story also seems to take it as given that only sinister corporate manipulations could explain why any citizen or legislator could possibly want people to be able to freely purchase cold medicine.
Mother Jones gets very possessive of its apparently beloved drug war a lot, defending it not only from evil Pharma but back in March from sequestration.
I blogged back in 2010 on some facts debunking the notion of an out-of-control meth epidemic demanding tough legal solutions.
Soon everyone with a cold may need to resort to this amusing Journal of Apocryphal Chemistry article that explains how chemists can turn the common, easily available substance of meth into highly desirable and rare pseudoephedrine.
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Companies are for a better economy... that must be bad too!
"a decent progressive should want stopped, toot sweet. I"
Someone needs to recharge the blog bot.
Yeah, two o' them sweets for me, too!
OT:
The End is Near
In a true sign of the end times Amanda Marcotte writes something that is logical, sensible, and well reasoned. Even if you don't agree with her position the piece itself is missing that normal hardcore feminist insanity she can't seem to escape anywhere else.
I am not clicking on that...
It's actually not dangerous, I didn't notice the author at first and was shocked when I did because the position is reasonable IMO (not sure I'd actually go through with it with my kids but I might) and it is well reasoned and completely lacking in derp.
Wow. Maybe Hugo sucked all the crazy out of the femisphere for a while.
I wonder who the ghost-writer was...
Are you saying that the entire femisphere caught the vapors and had to be ghostwritten by men until they could get over their hysterics? Because I find that totally plausible.
I'm just saying there is no way Marcotte wrote it.
I think MoJo is operating from the "if we admit even one government program is unnecessary or harmful, then the whole edifice will come crashing down" school of investigative journalism.
"I think MoJo is operating from the "if we admit..."
Not sure there is that much consistency in the rag; I'm more inclined to presume it's simply stupidity.
Mother Jones gets very possessive of its apparently beloved drug war a lot
That's because they're liberals, amirite?
Most of the comments for that story are not very supportive of ephedrine prohibition, just the opposite.
This, oddly enough, is the issue that turned me into a libertarian. Well, I think I was always one, but a couple of days after having to show my drivers license to by sinus pills, I was a LP member.
That is when I knew the federal government was out of control. And today, they're 10x as much out of control as they were then.
They're "progressives", not liberals. There's a difference.
Progressives pioneered pharmaceutical prohibition.
Progressives love freedom, it's just that they need for us to give it all up, for the children. You see?
Progressives love freedom as long as it doesn't inconvenience Leviathan.
We must give all our freedom to them so that they can keep it safe.
We must give government all power so that government can give it back to us. Yes, a progressive did explain it to me like that once.
Freedom is precious, which is why it should be locked away from the people so they don't squander or misuse it.
Well, you can't let the Proletariat just have icky drugs like meth. They'll abuse them. And not in a cool way like a pop of cocaine at a cocktail party when you put down that third martini too fast and need to get your head back straight.
Haha, great comment.
The article and the comments are disgusting. So many people crying for the government to put the boot on their neck to make them feel safe.
I thought that drug prohibition itself was the fault of sinister corporate manipulations. I guess that such glaring contradictions are what happens when progressives base their ideology on emotion, not evidence and logic.
Or, wait for it...
Reason!
Drink!
When drugs are prohibited, it's because Big Pharma doesn't want any competition.
When drugs are not prohibited it's because Big Pharma wants to keep selling the precursors.
Don't you know anything?
The contrast between Mother Jones' position on this issue and that of its readers, if the comment section to their articles is any indication of their readers' general opinion, is pretty striking.
The disconnect tells me that this isn't a liberal problem so much as it is a journalist problem. Journalists of all stripes (Reason excluded most of the time) seem to just fucking love power and bootlicking it in all its forms.
This. Remember the Hakkens case? Not a fucking word spent wondering whether it's really just to take people's kids away for smoking weed and being "anti-government". Just repeat verbatim whatever bullshit the LA police department spews, no matter how nonsensical it sounds. Nothing boosts ratings like a good child-abduction story, right? *Woot!* Amber Alert! *Woot!* For the Children! *Woot!*
Jesus Christ. What a stupid article. 90% of all meth in this country comes from the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico or the Asian Cartel. They make it by the train car load. I don't think they're ordering bulk Sudafed.
People make money selling Sudafed, therefore, it must be bad for you. Derp.