Protect Your Right to Make Pie Crust!

In the continuing tradition of silly ass legislation, a St. Louis legislator wants you to show ID and have retailers log sales of baking soda — because it's used to make crack cocaine. Can you imagine grandma having to whip out her license in order to make pie crust?

Currently, we have to make a special trip to the pharmacy counter to buy certain cold medicines. Any sneezing and sniffling cold sufferer needing medications containing pseudoephedrine, such as Sudafed, must show a photo ID when they buy the medicine. Pharmacists must log the names and addresses of buyers, including how much they buy. Don't send 16yr old Suzie to get you some, you must be over 18.

The sponsor of the baking soda bill said the same approach would work in reducing crack cocaine because it is often produced by dissolving powdered cocaine in a mixture of water and baking soda.

Why not go after water? Or mixing bowls? Or better yet, cocaine?

Drug enforcement officials laughed at it basically. Too many people use baking soda on a regular basis, as opposed to occasional use of Sudafed. Why even I have baking soda in my fridge, just like Arm and Hammer ask me to do. Others said that the crack makers would just turn to other substances, some of them dangerous like ammonia and batteries, even coffee filters.

Please do not regulate coffee filters.

Luckily, the bill has little chance of passage.