MENACE OF METH IN THIS STATE IS NOTHING TO SNEEZE AT

It's early July, and we're at the Supercenter pharmacy trying to buy
a box of store-brand allergy tablets.

Those little white tabs, with their magical mix of ingredients, are
one of the few reasons to trek to the Supercenter these days. The big
blue-faced monument to Chinese industry, with its oceanic parking lot
and Disney-length checkout lines, just takes too much time.

But, man, those little tablets are good. They really work.

They're also regulated by the state now, of course, because that's
the way it goes. If you like a thing, either everyone else does, too
- - which means chronic shortages and prices through the roof - or
someone decides it isn't good for you. They'll ban Jagermeister and
sausage biscuits any day now.

It turns out one of the ingredients in the allergy tabs is ephedrine.
It's a precursor chemical, in legal parlance, used to make bathtub
crystal methamphetamine. Ephedrine isn't even the ingredient that
tames our allergies, either. They could take it out as far as we're concerned.

But to buy the tabs now, we learn, your driver's license number must
be in the Supercenter computer. You have to be in the system, on the
grid, an approved purchaser - pick your own Orwellian phrase.

The goal is to keep you under the new Supercenter limit of two boxes
of tabs per month. That's all the allergy relief the policy allows.

As we leave the counter, quickly hiding our stash from other allergy
sufferers, because who knows what those poor people are capable of,
we have to wonder. What's stopping us from buying two similar boxes
at the drugstore on the corner and two other boxes from the drugstore
across from that, and so forth until we reach home with a pile of tabs?

I decide I don't want to know. I'm sure black helicopters and
computer spyware are involved. Then again, maybe the goal here is
just covering the Supercenter's backside, so it can prove it isn't
liable for the meth labs out there.

"Isn't it ironic?" a poet might ask. Privacy laws keep even family
members from knowing that mom has cancer unless they're cleared to
talk to the doctor, but the clerk at the Supercenter has the family's
whole story at her fingertips, including when big sister's birth
control runs out.

Over at the checkout line, where everyone reads the magazines to stay
awake, but no one buys them, we're reminded of why this matters. Dr.
Mary Holley, Arab's own local hero, is featured in People magazine
for her war against meth on Sand Mountain.

Listen to Holley for about 10 minutes, and you're ready to enlist. In
Alabama terms, that woman puts the hay down where the goats can get
it. Anyone can understand her.

Unlike cocaine, unlike marijuana, even unlike heroin, nothing in
methamphetamine is natural, she says. God didn't make this stuff, and
your body can't process it. It's like a battery acid cocktail, and
it's more addictive than you can imagine.

Wow.

I'll shut up about surveillance at the Supercenter now. Some things
are worse than the system, and it looks like we've found one.