Legislation We Don’t Need

Here’s an idea for a really bad law:

JEFFERSON CITY — First, the state said you must make a special trip to the pharmacy counter to buy certain cold medicines. That was to curb production of methamphetamine.

Now, a St. Louis legislator wants you to do the same thing to buy an even more common household item — baking soda — because it’s used to make crack cocaine.

The sponsor of the baking soda bill, Rep. Talibdin El-Amin, D-St. Louis, said the same approach was needed for baking soda because crack cocaine is often produced by dissolving powdered cocaine in a mixture of water and baking soda.

I guess we should be happy he wants to make it harder to get baking soda, not the other ingredient in that mixture–water.

Regulating baking soda will inconvience customers and waste drug store owners’ time. And since everybody buys baking soda, the bill won’t single out those who are buying it to produce crack cocaine. They might have to buy it in smaller quantities, that’s all.