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88-Year-Old Inventor Hassled By the DEA
New submitter Calibax writes "30 years ago, Bob Wallace and his partner came up with a product to help hikers, flood victims and others purify water. Wallace, now 88 years old, packs his product by hand in his garage, stores it in his backyard shed and sells it for $6.50. Recently, the DEA has been hassling him because his product uses crystalline iodine. He has been refused a license to purchase the iodine because it can be used in the production of crystal meth, and as a result he is now out of business. A DEA spokesman describes this as 'collateral damage' not resulting from DEA regulations but from the selfish actions of criminals."
An unconstitutional federal agency puts an honest businessman out of work. If you've had enough of this shit, as well as the rest of the collateral damage from the War On Drugs like the routine violation of the first, fourth, and fifth amendments, by a militarized police force, vote for Ron Paul.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
so much for blaming people for killing people, this is blaming the gun maker for the people killed by it.
Notice how this hasn't gone to court? The DEA would be shut down so fast from harassing Mr. Wallace in court that they wouldn't even dare it. Instead, they shut him down by threats alone, aka PIPA/SOPA.
No, the problem is the prohibition mindset.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Can we just end prohibition already? Drug enforcement is ruining more lives than drugs.
He should just contact the criminals who cook meth, I mean they get their supply of it from some where. In a land where crystalline iodine is illegal only criminals will have crystalline iodine. Or something like that.
... then nothing gets done.
The DEA could easily tell whomever gives the licenses to approve this guy, but they choose not to. Instead, they want to blame it on criminals, instead of where the blame really lies, which is the bullshit anti-drug laws that we have too many of.
We could legalize meth, have the government or some pharmacy make it safely, and then every loser that wants to do it won't be supporting the people who make it.
The problem here is not meth addicts, it's the bullshit they go thru to make the meth, which hurts consumers more. You won't have druggies stealing the crap the makes meth, you won't have places become toxic because people are making meth in their bathtub/kitchen.
America, the land of the hypocrites and home of the illusion of freedom.
Be seeing you...
As can coal, sulfur, saltpeter. Let's forbid them.
Sorry hikers and flood victims, we know you'd like clean water but while you're drinking that tepid water and consequently when you're lying ill you can reflect on the fact that your sacrifice means that drug dealers have had to find another source for iodine to create methamphetamine. We know it's a large sacrifice for an almost immeasurably small payoff, but this was low-hanging fruit and we're pretty lazy. DEA.
People like you are the reason why we can't have nice things.
The restricting of decongestants because they can be used as a precursor to meth is absolutely ridiculous. This is also ridiculous.
And for the record, I knew it was a similar situation to making the purchase of decongestants a pain in the ass before reading the article based on the summary alone.
so in other words....he was asked to do the polices job for them, with no compensation from the police asking for the information, and in fact are charging him money to do so!
Im sorry, i dont side with the DEA on anything (not that my name lends any credibility on this one)
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
According to TFA, he did apply for a license and was refused by the DOJ. He's appealing that decision.
The fact remains that a useful product to purify water cheaply is no longer available because the government wants to control the active ingredient, and is willing to make the product unavailable as "collateral damage". I would guess some other collateral damage is the people who may end up with diseases because they drink water that isn't purified, and the percentage that die as a result.
You're operating under the premise that it's reasonable to place all these restrictions on his behavior to prevent meth labs from popping up.
Another perspective (that I share) is that the government shouldn't be trying to regulate drugs to begin with, and that the government is essentially taxing him to pursue an unachievable objective, eradicating drug use.
I appreciate the grandparent post providing some context, but to me it's just another example of an outdated prohibitionist mindset getting in the way of people actually producing useful products.
The period of extended prohibition in the US has tremendous costs that people have sort of become habituated to--not just financial costs, but costs in terms of police militarization, civil rights violations, an implicitly (if not explicitly) racist justice system, etc.
This sort of government babysitting doesn't seem sustainable in the long-term, especially if the government gets serious about what it actually needs to spend money on and what it doesn't (and if it doesn't happen voluntarily, it will happen as a consequence of market and economic collapse).
While the DEA has in the past, and likely will in the future done some stupid and mindless things, it doesn't appear that this is the case in this instance
It does to me. It won't stop real meth cooks for a minute. It just covers the DEA's asses and fucks up a legitimate businessman selling a potentially life-saving product.
he could put a little more thought into the product, seal off the iodine in sintered glass or some other method that allowed water to pass over the crystals but did not allow for removal or tampering
Yeah, because a meth cook could never work out how to break a glass capsule.
And it would cost a lot more and probably price it out of the market (for those who actually wanted to purify water).He has been filling the iodine bottles by hand in his shed, and doesn't have an R&D facility or make his own glassware.
No, my logic is not twisted. If you call my logic twisted then you also call Milton Friedman's logic twisted? He also didn't support prohibition.
In the end of the 19th century heroin was sold in drugstores without prescription, but with a warning label that it causes addiction.
And you know what? There wasn't any heroin-craze. There weren't hordes of junkies on the street waiting for their next fix.
Yes, people want to get high, I don't deny that. But you are forgetting that there are also people who want to make money off of other people - the criminals. And for criminals the cheaper and more addictive the "product" the better.
People want to get high, but they can't get high from legal products, so they turn to criminals. You can't make people not want to get high, but you can take away the money-making incentive from criminals by making drugs legally available.
I apologize in advance for actually reading TFA, but I don't see anywhere in the article any claims from the DEA that the chemical has ever been used to actually make meth.
Choice quotes:
about four years ago, the DEA began to look closely at the product, even citing it in a position paper, and suggested that it was being used by cranksters as well as campers.
Suggestions do not equal proof.
Special Agent Richard Camps, a San Jose-based state narcotics task force commander, said he received reports of suspicious buyers. "Weird-looking people, 'Beavis and Butt-Head'-types, were coming into camping stores and buying everything they had on the shelves," Camps said.
Really? A "state narcotics commander" (which I assume is someone important, probably in charge of other officers) just called a class of people "beavis and butt-head types," and he gets to keep his job? Whoever is doing PR for the state is probably cringing right now.
"Then they would take off into the mountains and try to cook meth with it." The DEA reported agents found Polar Pure at a meth lab they dismantled in Tennessee two years ago.
Okay, so they tried to do it, but then what happened? Did they succeed?
If it's just as hard to cookup meth with this stuff as it is to cook up meth with other stuff that's legal, or if you just can't figure out how to cook up meth with this stuff at all, then let this old guy have his iodine.
coding is life
Consider it part of the cost of doing business. His competitors, if they used the same chemical, would be faced with the exact same costs, so this doesn't put him at a competitive disadvantage.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
The DEA has started keeping a much tighter rein on the active ingredient in his product in order to keep it out of the hands of the aforementioned meth labs (just like they did a couple years back with buying decongestants using psuedoephedrine).
Bullshit. The law enacted in 1983 banned possession of precursors and equipment for methamphetamine production. Iodine is neither. What they did a few years back was to enforce the law as it was written. Today the executive branch of the government, in the form of the DEA, is overstepping the law - that is plenty sinister for me. How does one deal with a bureaucracy that makes up rules rather than following the law?
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
I'm totally supportive of hands off approach to consumption of any drug a person wants to take, but meth labs are a public danger. The fact that they explode at an alarming rate putting their neighbors at serious harm is the line where the tweaker's rights cross over into affecting the right (to live) of others. Now don't me wrong make it legal and license it and ensure safety. Until that happens I sure as heck don't want one next door.
We could legalize meth, have the government or some pharmacy make it safely, and then every loser that wants to do it won't be supporting the people who make it.
Just because the DEA overreaches and just because there are solid libertarian arguments for legalizing some drugs doesn't mean there are no substances for which prohibition makes good social, economic, and ethical sense....
Your idea sounds nice, but unless your plan includes banning the users of your legal dispensary from medical and dental care the fiscal costs alone are way too high. Amphetamine abuse causes serious neurological problems, well in excess of those potentially caused by alcohol, cocaine, or heroin; the burden of caring for addicts could be staggering. Severe depression, anxiety, concentration problems, motor impairment, etc. Not to mention the social and moral costs of, you know, just watching people cook themselves into death or permanent oblivion with product that you asked your government to manufacture and give to them.
If you firmly believe that people should have a right to get high, fine. But don't go spouting off about which particular substances should be available - without the pharmacology, economics, and ethics to back it up - simply to satisfy your libertarian impulse. That's not advocacy, it's sociopathy.
- $1200 is a lot to pay for a license and a license generally needs to be renewed once a year.
- He would need to produce an additional 200-300 units a year to justify the cost of the license and this is a lot of units to produce.
- He's 88 years old. He most probably produces the product for his love of the technology than for profit by this time.
Let's be pretty blunt about this... I'd imagine that it all started with the $1200. While the DEA is obviously trying to do their job, their job policing the drug trade in the U.S. should not be impact legitimate uses of these chemicals by stopping the small and up and coming businesses from being able to function. It would be like saying that since a bomb maker would likely need a resistor or relay to make a detonator, then anyone who wishes to build anything with a resistor or relay should have to pay DHS a $1200 fee before they could purchase them. This would eliminate a tremendous number of small businesses from starting up and would seriously hurt America as a result. We as computer geeks often forget that things like crystalline iodine is a component to a guy like this in the same way that a resistor is to a electronics nerd.
The DEA is a publicly funded entity. They already receive their budgets from the government and we as a people pay their operating expenses as a whole because we recognize that they "fight an evil" which most of us believe needs to be fought. I am disappointed to see that they are penalizing this guy. Yes, you have many great and valid points about how he dealt poorly with this situation...but... he's justifiably pissed off that the DEA is penalizing him for doing absolutely nothing wrong. I makes absolutely no difference which organization it is that is trying to take his money... honest inventors and businessmen shouldn't have to pay stipends such as this because there's a few bad apples screwing it up for him.
No he obviously is not a diplomat. He almost certainly isn't someone you'd want negotiating contracts for your company. But he is a guy who produces and probably regularly improves upon a technical innovation and provides it to a group of people who wish to buy it and see a utility with it. The DEA is obviously aware of him now. They had the budget to track him down and communicate with him. Asking $1200 for a license to a chemical he obviously knows how to handle was just plain stupid. As to the bulk purchasers thing... this is obviously what was most important or should have been to the DEA. Instead of putting the guy out of business, they instead should have been more diplomatic and asked him "If someone orders more of these things than they could actually use, could you give them a call and say 'Hi... wow you're my best customer this month... it's a big order and I don't want to make you wait unjustifiably long, what are you using all these filters for? Can I send you the first 1/4 of the order today as I have that many on my shelf and I'll send the remaining 3/4 when I finish producing them?' and call us if they sound like they aren't buying them for the filtering itself.". I bet you anything, the old fella would have been much more amenable, and then the DEA would have accomplished something meaningful instead of shutting down a small, legitimate business.
As I understand it, the DEA can go after any precursor of drugs. Besides your example of ephedrine, then pseudoephedrine, they were also watching for large purchases of lithium batteries. And of course, anhydrous ammonia, which was usually stolen from farmers or pipelines.
It goes along the same lines as possession of "burglary tools". That can be anything, including your average hand tools. Yup, everyone here, who's had a screwdriver in their car, could be arrested if they were caught. Luckily, that's rarely enforced without other supporting evidence. A crow bar, ski mask, and bag full of cash with dollar signs on it will probably do. :)
So back to the drug cooking, they could go after ether, water, distilled water, reverse osmosis water systems, gasoline, diesel fuel, etc... Those are for some various drugs, but all are used in making at least something that's popular on the street. But lets not forget the most popular illicit American pasttime, marijuana... High pressure sodium lights, fluorescent lights (cool white and soft white bulbs), sprinkler timers, drip irrigation hose, air filtration systems, supplemental air conditioning (portable air conditioners, or requests to have additional air conditioners installed in a residence).
So, why would the DEA want to block this innocent inventor? Well, easy.. There are alternative solutions for cheap. He doesn't *have* to sell crystalline iodine. He'd still have a viable product with another solution that couldn't be used to make drugs or explosives. Then again, a substantial part of his customer base may be those who aren't looking to purify water.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
It is just too addictive. It has more or less a 100% addiction rate. So you can't do "just a little" meth or be an occasional user. You get hooked, hardcore. Combine that with the massive amount of damage it does and it is just not safe for use at all really.
I think people forget that there are different levels of dangers in terms of drugs. Some, like marajuna, are pretty harmless. It doesn't have any physical addiction symptoms, is effectively impossible to OD on, and doesn't cause much long term damage (there are studies to indicate it causes some damage to higher reasoning skills, and of course when smoked it causes damage that any smoke inhalation does). It is quite safe over all.
Others though, like meth, are exceedingly dangerous. They have strong physical addictions (some like heroin can have fatal withdrawal symptoms), and do extreme amounts of damage to the body. You want to see real nasty, look up Krokodil but don't look at photos unless you have a strong stomach: People literally rot away alive. Life expectancy for addicts is a couple years at best.
While I sure as hell don't support the current "All drugs are evil and should be illegal," mentality, you have to learn about them and appreciate that some are just too addictive and destructive to be things that are sold over the counter. We need to legalize the reasonably safe drugs, not just everything and say "Fuck it, this can kill you quick but who cares?"
No, it's more like saying "making lots more things illegal causes an increase in crime rates."
Learn to love Alaska
That is not the fault of this guy. That is the fault of stupid government policies which prohibit meth labs. If meth labs were legal they could be regulated and the price of meth would drop to a point illegal operations would be unprofitable and risky. Right now it is apparent the risk to reward ratio favours those with an investment in its production. It is unlikely there will ever be enough enforcement to make it a cost-prohibitive business model. All one has to do is look at who runs this stuff. Some of the richest people in the world are in the illegal drug business. One of them is the richest man in Mexico and competes in the same league as Bill Gates. With just one seizures more money is confiscated than any one of us will earn in 50 or so life times.
I'm very much a fan of legalise and regulate everything potentially dangerous. Regulate essentially means ensure proper packaging, safety (industrial production facilities), and distribution. I shouldn't be put at more risk just because I make stupid decisions (use drugs). I don't use drugs by the way. I am pro-legalisation because there is no good reason to prohibit. Prohibition is not based on science or numbers. It is based on a warped perception. Even where things are semi-accurate (those using a product become dangerous to others) you could introduce a legal business model around it to make it safer. If it is dangerous to others for instance restrict sale and place of consumption. Businesses can then be required to have security and health professionals on staff at all times.
The same thing applies to many other things as well that many see as undesirable. From pornography and prostitution to gambling.
It doesn't sound like he was 'asked', since when he refused, they forbade him the chemical. Asking implies that you have the choice to say yes OR no.
I ask my 4 year old if he'd like to go to bed, and he doesn't have a choice. That in no way diminishes the polite manner in which I ask.
Learn to love Alaska
So: some nutter abuses something useful, what should we do ? Another nutter kills someone with a kitchen knife, should we ban all knives ? You use petrol to make a molotov cocktail so should we shut all petrol stations ? We cannot tie everything down just because a few people abuse what we need for day to day life.
Then there is the most important and significant component of all of this drug making -- knowledge and understanding. If people don't know how to do stuff, they will be less likely to do stuff. Let's regulate knowledge and learning. ...can I just ask "are we there yet?"
Read more. I know we are capable of.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/dec/27/crime-smuggling-alcohol-tobacco
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/648986/posts
http://www.atf.gov/alcohol-tobacco/
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
Only the supreme court justices opinions matter.
Well, that's a rather royalist opinion on your part, I must say, and one with which Madison and Jefferson disagreed. (cf. the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798.) The supreme court said it was fine and dandy for FDR to steal all the gold in the country and imprison innocent people for their race, but that didn't make it legal. It only meant that the government would pretend it was legal.
The constitution is written in English, not sanskrit. It's not the court's job to tell us what it says, it's their job to enforce it, and they've done a piss poor job of that for a very long time.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The DEA has NO BUSINESS WHATSOEVER regulating a common element with many well known uses simply because a few morons might do something they don't like with it. That includes iodine and decongestant tablets (BTW, the reformulated DEA friendly tablets are not as effective). They shouldn't be charging people a thousand bucks for a license to handle iodine in any event. If THEY are so interested in watching iodine, let THEM foot the bill. They shouldn't be embarking on a STASI campaign to get citizens to keep watch lists for them.
Given his age, he would have grown up in an era far less tolerant of government interference in an individual's actions than you appear to be. Cooperating with the DEA likely feels a bit too much like being "a good Nazi" to someone who probably fought in WWII.
If it was legal, you wouldn't ever have a meth lab next door, some mail order house would be selling reasonably pure Chinese made meth for a fraction of the price a bathtub lab could make it for.
Meth labs exist because of our drug laws.
And if drugs were legalised, there would no longer be any reason to operate a back street meth lab...
Drugs would instead be manufactured in large factories, which can be situated well away from any neighbours and can have regulated safety procedures... Explosive chemicals are already processed every day in factories on an industrial scale with a relatively good safety track record.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
People don't use drugs as a weapon to kill others, they take them themselves, and when done in a safe manner harms noone else.
And noone is suggesting a free for all, just that drugs should be regulated.
Doing so would eliminate or massively reduce drug related crime, save law enforcement a huge amount of money and bring in a large amount of tax revenue.
Drugs themselves would be safer as it would no longer be an underground activity, drugs would no longer be cut with other random substances and users would have an avenue for complaint if they received a sub standard product. The government could also keep track of who was purchasing and using drugs.
Addicts would no longer be risking contracting HIV or similar illnesses through needle sharing etc...
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
You have to love the hypocrisy. Everyone on slashdot LOATHES corporations, presuming that anyone trying to turn a profit in groups of more than 3 people must be horrible monsters and parasites. But legal meth labs? It's GAME ON... because it only makes sense. It blows my mind.
You must live in a very black and white world!
If you have:
- Activity A that is evil.
- Activity B that is a LOT more evil.
- Defending that activity B should be changed to Activity A is extremely reasonable. Where is the hypocrisy?
I understand where you're coming from, but it's actually counter productive. If everyone just rants about them on general principle, it's easy for the government to dismiss concerns as general rantings. If they are being criticised for specific behaviours time and again, it's going to be easier to argue that those behaviours need to be remedied.
No they are confiscating Chemistry books, and are considering to make it legal for international raids on libraries.
All of this tracking of chemicals that are toxic is rather pointless, similar to the overdone security theatre at airports. From my High School days Chemistry where I was an A+ student allowed to basically go into the teacher's lab and play myself, I've learned certain truths:
1.) Ecological products are seldom that. The then-current fad were phosphate-free detergents. Phosphate-free they were, but nobody asked what the substitutes were. (Let's say filling up rivers with phosphate would have been way nicer than that to the eco system)
2.) Toxic chemicals book keeping is a joke. So you do keep your book, and in the end you check how much "toxic waste" (which we in the school kept in huge dark glass bottles) you've got and fill it up to the expected amount with (purified) water. (Purified to avoid causing funny reactions inside)
3.) If you need some "dangerous" chemicals, take a little water, a little bit of salt, and a PSU, plugin the PSU into an outlet, put the DC side into the salt water. Now put that into your bedroom, close all windows, and good sleep, chlorine gas clearly make your corpse be very clean. Considering the fact that new "drugs" (and substitutes) are being created every day, the incredible many ways to create an explosive (or a precursor), the policy of licensing/forbidding access will obviously mean death by starvation (you can do dangerous stuff with food stuff, e.g. NaCl also called table salt), which is good because some stuff the human body produces can be dangerous (piss, gases, ...), so the government will end up with a very dead and incredible secure country.
It doesn't sound like he was 'asked', since when he refused, they forbade him the chemical. Asking implies that you have the choice to say yes OR no.
I ask my 4 year old if he'd like to go to bed, and he doesn't have a choice. That in no way diminishes the polite manner in which I ask.
I hope you don't consider the relationship of a 4 year old to a parent a good metaphor for your relationship with your government.
Unless you're in North Korea, then of course that makes sense.
You know, if we repealed all drug laws (except perhaps antibiotics) and regulated, licenced, and taxed the production, importation, and sale, you could disband the DEA and remove the national debt. As it is, billions upon billions of dollars are going straight to Columbia making some very evil people incredibly wealthy, with not a single penny of it benefiting the American economy.
It's madness. Take crack cocaine, for example. If the stuff was legal it would probably cost like five bucks a gram, and the crackheads wouldn't have to break into my house and steal to support their filthy habits. The drug laws haven't stopped a single person from becoming a junkie. In fact, twice as many people drank after prohibition than before its passage, meaning that the law not only didn't stop people from drinking, somehow it encouraged drinking.
The forbidden fruit is always more tempting.
Free Martian Whores!
Yes, and it follows that piling on extra consequences - jail time - is never going to be effective. We should instead accept that this is human nature and concentrate on mitigating the consequences, for example by having the government run drug dens where people can get their high while under guard, on safe dosages and substances, and with overall usage monitored to keep it on safe level. Of course such measures would be needed only for drugs likely to result in dangerous behaviour, rather than, say, cannabis or tobacco.
So DEA is not responsible for the unintended side effects of its actions, but drug users are? Despite this being the same unintended side effect? After all, if drugs were not illegal the war in Mexico would not be an issue.
At the end of the day human rights are whatever people agree they are. There are several competing versions, and I'd argue that the right to alter your body chemistry should be included, because after all it's your body.
Also, who are you to say what sacrifice is meaningful or not to someone else?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
This isn't a human rights issue
On the contrary, the Supreme Court ruled that it's a woman's right to remove a blastocyct from her body. If she has the right to remove a fetus, why doesn't she have the right to inject heroin? It isn't anyone's business but hers. If she steals to support her habit, arrest her for stealing.
People routinely blame the DEA and the prohibition on the war in Mexico
And they're right, just as alcohol prohibition was responsible for the wars in Chicago and other cities. The only reason there wasn't violence in Canada was because alcohol was legal in Canada.
Free Martian Whores!