Slashdot Mirror
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."
It can also be used to create an explosive compound that shall remain nameless.
...it'd be a shame if anything were to happen to it!
Methamphetamine actually is useful to hikers and flood victims!
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."
I want to say something about this, something clever, something snarky...but I'm at a loss. I mean, this is a facepalm of such epicness it is nearly unfathomable.
Scott
"Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid."
Also, make sure there's no Los Pollos Hermanos close by.
http://dilemma.gulecha.org - My philospohical short film.
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...
I hate to read TFA and I hate to defend the DEA (did we learn nothing from Prohibition?) but once again this is a sloppy and wholly misleading article summary (thanks Slashdot!) To wit:
As much as I like this guy and his sense of humor, it seems much less sinister than the Slashdot linkbait summary indicates. It appears to be a pretty simple case of "government restricts chemical that can be used in meth labs, old guy making product in his garage with said product doesn't want to deal with the government bureaucracy and is surprised when the government shuts off his access to that chemical."
"95% of all Slashdot
Iodine isn't available without a license from the DEA.
Not here, or here, or even here.
In fact, I can only find 32 results in the first web site I thought to look in.
Looks like the system works!
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.
The purified water doesn't taste very good, but when it's the difference between hydrating and not hydrating, aka life and death, it's worth it.
Not to mention nobody wants to spend the incredible amount of money it would take to fix broken people, instead they'd rather let their friends make money on both ends thanks to privatization of everything from the military to the prisons.
I once saw a show with this monk, damned if I can think of the name of it, that spent all his time with junkies. he said if you talked to them, I mean REALLY sat down and talked to them, nearly all of them had ONE THING, one single thing that they just couldn't face. After all nobody wakes up and says "I want lots of sores and my teeth falling out" now do they? He gave as an example one junkie where after talking to her it turned out her parents had thrown her to the street after her sister was killed in her car, so he paid to fly her halfway around the world and went with her to her parents graves so she could get it off her chest. less than a year later she was clean and working.
Recreational "party" drugs like pot should frankly be legal but when you have people that will literally go commit a crime just to get thrown in prison because they can't get their drug of choice on the outside? There is something in that person's life they simply cannot face. Sadly one of the guys i hung out with in HS is now living under a bridge somewhere, it turned out his mom was getting him fried at the age of 8 and fucking johns in front of him. can anybody blame the guy for staying stoned?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Keynes is widely misunderstood. He once said that it would be better to build totally useless pyramids than to have high unemployment, but he wasn't actually suggesting that we should do that. It's obvious when you think about it, because there are a million and one productive things that could be done with the same labor. The actual idea is that it's better to pay someone to work in a soup kitchen than it is to watch crime skyrocket if you leave them to starve and they resort to theft.
If (as would seem obvious from this case) the DEA is not engaged in anything productive, you don't have to make them unemployed. You just have to eliminate their current positions and instead set them to work patrolling the streets in gang neighborhoods at night to suppress actual crime.
Your logic is twisted.
These more addictive (and cheaper) substances were invented because there're people wanting them. They would be invented the same way if the drugs were legalized and (substantially) taxed for the inevitable health caring funding.
The core problem here is simple: people wants to get high, and they don't care about the consequences. All the rest is secondary to that.
There's no laws forbidding you from jump seat on a cactus, there is?
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
Here's the DEA's list. Those marked as "List 1" are the most restricted. It's not that long a list. Iodine is the only chemical on List 1 that isn't particularly hazardous.
And that is why Portugal's approach to drugs, treating it as a medical and mental health issue, is working and ours isn't.
After all the money spent on the War on Drugs, the US still has the addiction rates that we had at the turn of the 19th century. If we only had as many freedoms.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
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
No, did you even read the summary? He was denied the license. He didn't refuse to file for a license. He was denied. The gp's point is right on the money.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
.. as, say, gasoline refineries, I bet they would not be "blowing up at alarming rate" -- and no, I do not use their end product, and do not even intend to use it!
Paul B.
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.
it can in fact be banned without a constitutional amendment, thanks to the Controlled Substances Act, or any other number of similar control structures.
The controlled substances act is unconstitutional. If there was any such power in the commerce clause, the 18th amendment would never have been necessary to ban alcohol.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
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?"
You can claim anything you want to be unconstitutional, however, your opinion doesn't matter. Only the supreme court justices opinions matter.
That said, the fact that you would like a thing to be unconstitutional, if enough people agree with you, allows for a process where it can in fact be made to agree with your desires.
Iodine has all kinds of legitimate uses in all kinds of non-drug fields. Why not focus on stopping the drug labs getting hold of those things that are specific to the production of drugs. If the drug labs cant get the Pseudoephadrine or other drug ingredients, it wont matter how much iodine they can get.
This guy makes $100,000 a year on this stuff. They told him he needed to pay a $1100 regulatory fee and needed to secure his stash. He completely ignores the fee and sends the DEA a picture of his old dog claiming it's his security. I'm really at a loss. Did he secretly not actually want to keep his business?
I do not think the over regulation of these kinds of materials is necessary in society, but it is what it is right now. If he wanted to keep his business, he should have at least tried to look like he wanted to comply instead of brushing everything off and hoping for the best.
Grow up and learn to face the consequences of the decisions YOU DO, instead of pleading "not my fault, it's the prohibitions! It's their fault" childish.
What are you talking about? I do not do drugs. I would not if they were legal. Prohibition wastes massive amounts of my tax dollars on idiotic tail-chasing and imprisoning non-violent "criminals" for life. Nothing good has ever come from Prohibition. Prohibition is an excuse for the government to violate our rights, spend our money, and Prohibition causes crime (and no, not in the way that making murder illegal makes murders criminals, but that Prohibition causes murder, rape, and robbery, in addition to putting millions of non-violent people into the category of "criminal"). I can't tell if you are really too stupid to understand, or lying to pretend you don't get it for your rhetorical games to protect yourself from actually listening to dissenting opinions.
Learn to love Alaska
"Combine that with the massive amount of damage it does and it is just not safe for use at all really."
A new study out this week from Columbia University reports that the "massive amount of damage" caused by meth is actually totally overblown, basically a "myth", and in fact counter-productive for the purpose of treating meth addicts. Very much in the same scare-mongering tradition of claims that (a) marijuana causes instant insanity, (b) crack babies are crippled for life, etc.
http://healthland.time.com/2011/11/21/why-the-myth-of-the-meth-damaged-brain-may-hinder-recovery/
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
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."
I have 2 or 3 bottles of this stuff in my camping equipment. That it's all been packed by this one guy in his garage blows my mind.
YOU are being arbitrary.
Marijuana is not unharmuful. It's as harmful as any other smoking drug.
More facts, less wishful thinking, please.
Ironic that you plead for more facts and less wishful thinking - since your assertion that marijuana is "as harmful as any other smoking drug" has been disproven by actual research. Marijuana does not cause lung cancer. Dr. Donald Tashkin made this finding 6 years ago now, and it has been reaffirmed by subsequent follow on investigation, which has also turned up evidence of lower risks for other types of cancer in cannabis users. Cannabinoids are in fact potent anti-cancer agents (shown in lab tests as well).
Check this out: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/25/AR2006052501729.htm l. And this: http://cancerpreventionresearch.aacrjournals.org/content/2/8/759.abstract .
Follow your own advice and actually learn the facts.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
The issue with the phosphate was the effect on plants and other green organisms. Algae and bacteria blooms, that kind of thing. What is so much worse about zeolite A, sodium carbonate, citrates, and sodium silicate?
Blar.
Once you recognize someone is a victim due to your actions in the course of your regular duties, it becomes YOUR responsibility to make it right. Labeling something collateral damage doesn't absolve one of responsibility, but, instead, claims responsibility with mitigating circumstances. And if you're responsible for the harm, you're responsible for the fix.
It matters that the constitution is in the language of the people, because government exists with the consent of the governed. If the people reject the government, it has no legitimacy. In the United States, the Founding Fathers even went so far as to ensure the people had the implicit right of violent revolution should the government ever become too evil. That's what the Second Amendment is about. Over a hundred years ago, everyone would nod and agree and say that was good patriotic American talk. Now, more than half of politicians would say that was terrorist talk, because they themselves are evil and unamerican.
I'm not going to scour the comments to see if anyone already said this yet, but I didn't see it, so here goes.
Iodine is used for the methylation step in the reaction process, and there are other ways to do it. They are not as efficient, and slower, and messier, and basically produce a lot more toxic waste and a dirtier product. So even if the DEA actually managed to block all sources of iodine, they would arguably be doing more damage than good.
If you ask me, trying to control chemicals is pointless. It's the addicts that need attention, not the chemists. But it's way sexier trying to bust criminals than help poor people.
And I asserting what the link says, and you quoted: "Consequently the recreational abuse of opium,"
We can argue in order to reach a consensus about what is "use", and what is "abuse".
Let's begin with mine:
Use : making (recreational, in our case) use of something in a way that does not perverts its original (recreational, in our case) intent.
Example of alcohol use: occasionally getting drunk with friends getting a good chat or some other fun time.
Abuse: perverting the original intent of the drug.
Example: getting drunk everyday, and suffering from this, as you cannot stop yourself from doing that.
Marijuana, Cocaine, Opium, Alcoho, whatever - the intended purpose of all them is to get some pleasure.
As soon as the subject gets addicted, and starts to use the drugs just because he can not stop, getting so or more hurts as he gets pleasure (if any pleasure is got at all - some drugs stops working, while still being necessary to the metabolism), I define it as an abuse.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
And when you look back, what do you think it would be like if the drugs were free and dispensed at the store alongside aspirin? Would the "Bad things" have happened if people weren't having to deal with criminals and steal and such to get the money for the high prices for illegal substances? From the US experience with Prohibition, the answer is "no", but I'm sure you'll discard that answer if you find it inconvenient.
If drugs were yet more cheaper and freely available, things probably would gone worst. I saw people (a boyfriend of my sister) bleeding on his nose on my bathroom after sneezing cocaine (bastard, he did it on my house without asking), and then going to the night crashing the car and hurting people. His brother died in another car accident, some years later
I saw fathers leaving wife and son alone on home, while going out to get high with "friends".
I lost friends in car accidents due to intoxicated drivers. Friends of mine had relatives heavily injured (and impaired for life) on that same accidents.
I know I already mentioned it, but I will mention again: Manaus is (or were, I don't live there anymore) one major cocaine entry point in Brazil. Cocaine is very cheap and easily available there, to the point in that it was possible to see cocaine being served together with scotch and wine on some college parties.
On the aftermath, the drug users that were rich could walk away from the mess as they could afford the medical care needed to survive healthy the experience (but some few of them must live with some health problems for the rest of their lives).
The users that could not afford the medical care, well... They just keep going on the best they can.
Of course the major part of these guys managed to walk way almost intact. But a good, significantly part of them did not - counting friends, acquaintances and their relatives, I will guess that 16 to 18 people died or got heavily impaired somewhat due to, direct or indirect, drugs abuse on an universe of... hummm... 120 or 130 people I can remember somehow (Orkut and Facebook to the rescue!).
Talking with relatives that always lived here in São Paulo, things are not that harsh. People dies and get health problems everywhere and all the time, but the incidence on my social circle are one order of magnitude higher than on theirs.
Cocaine and some other drugs are somewhat more expensive here in São Paulo (the popular drug here appears to be marijuana).
I would be naive to conclude that drugs are the only reason for that, but I would be even more naive by ruling them out from the equation.
If irresponsible were a felony, we'd all be in jail.
On a second thought, you are right. I would got a life sentence for some things I did when younger... :-)
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
And what happens when the courts utterly fail in doing their job?
That's the question that the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions addressed. When the federal government oversteps its authority, it's the duty of the states to defend their people from an overreaching federal government, as happened when the Vermont militia stopped the US Army from entering Vermont to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."