With explanation in abstract that its easier to buy meth than pseudoephedrine.
People may laugh at this, as they should since it is an absurd situation, but this isn't entirely wrong.
Neither my wife or I drive and during the pandemic she gave up her license after getting an appointment at the DOL was difficult. Both of us carry US passport cards as our ID.
This has resulted in several situations where we've been turned down for purchasing restricted items like alcohol or drugs containing pseudoephedrine, particularly the latter, because a passport card can't be scanned by the usual point of sale systems. There are a couple of places in Seattle that are happy to accept a passport card but even at them it's sometimes been dependent on who is working the counter that day.
> she gave up her license after getting an appointment at the DOL was difficult.
I'm not sure what DOL is a reference to; however I now many individuals struggled to get appointments at the Secretary of State (SoS) and that is also where one (at least where I live) would need to get a non-motorist ID. Same amount of frustration / time spent to get a non-motorist ID as it would be to renew your driver license.
Maybe the most honest state is Missouri, where plates, stickers for them, and your driver's license are all handled by the state's Department of Revenue.
State non-motorist IDs are some of the only IDs available to non-citizens who live in the US and don't drive
Foreign passport and non-driver's ID were her only options--and passports are a nuisance to carry around and a PITA if lost/stolen.
(And, yes, I think that just under two years bit was not by chance. They were definitely looking for signs of fraud and I'm sure they finally approved it just before the point where they would have had to issue a permanent one rather than a conditional one.)
There are millions of visa-holders who live in the US but don't have green cards. Carrying around a foreign passport for everyday identification is an absolutely terrible idea because of the risk of theft or loss. Losing a visa-containing foreign passport can necessitate getting an emergency travel document from your foreign-country consulate, traveling back to your home country, getting a new passport, getting an appointment at the US embassy in your home country, getting a new visa issued in your new passport, then finally traveling back to the US. The whole process could take weeks or months and cost thousands of dollars.
For my wife, it's because she has even less tolerance for paperwork than I do and it's easier to just go to the pharmacies we know have their heads bolted on straight than it is to gather up all of the stuff and go to the overworked and harried DOL.
Underlying documents required to obtain ID cost money, a significant expense for lower-income Americans. The combined cost of document fees, travel expenses and waiting time are estimated to range from $75 to $175.
The travel required is often a major burden on people with disabilities, the elderly, or those in rural areas without access to a car or public transportation. In Texas, some people in rural areas must travel approximately 170 miles to reach the nearest ID office.
I find it a credible claim. There was a story a few years back which made the rounds that ... turned out to be a case of fraud.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/articl...
https://www.inquirer.com/news/mark-damico-johnny-bobbitt-kat...
That said, given frictions of obtaining ID and necessity of having same, I could well believe that this is an issue.
Err, no they don't. At least not with any of the IDs I've gotten in California for the past several years....
Scraping together the required documentation for proving her address was problematic. I set up the utilities, I'm the one that deals with them, they're just in my name. She doesn't like dealing with that sort of stuff and at the time most of it was done her English (she learned her first word of English at 43) would have added needless complexity.
Even the property records are problematic on that--we put our house into an estate-planning trust. The correct titling of the property has the trust and then both of our names--but the system only *displays* two lines. Thus it shows the trust and then my name, hers gets omitted.
Then a DL itself is another $40. A non-driving ID is like $30, although there's discounts depending on age and income.
- It’s Federal law.
I don’t know why people keep forking over money for state ID. It’s a state government scam.
I ran into a guy online that couldn't obtain an ID, period. The only form of ID he had was a driver's license. His doctor pulled it (legitimately, but needlessly--there was no question he was incapable of driving) leaving him with nothing. Where he lives that left one option--get a birth certificate. The application must be signed--something he's no longer capable of doing. The only other route would be to show up in person at the right office--multiple states away, a trip that would be medically ill-advised.
Note that he's educated and not poor, this is purely a problem of the system not handling the oddball cases. That state needs to be clobbered with a clue-by-4, if you pull a driver's license you should issue the person a non-driver's ID!
We have also run into a problem. When my wife was naturalized a hyphen got inserted in her name on her naturalization certificate, it wasn't noticed at the time. Almost everything is in her name as intended but social security saw the hyphen and would not relent. Even after we legally changed her name to rid it of the hyphen they were digging in their heels on changing the records. At this point we *think* the Real ID stuff is going to work, but the virus interfered. For the occasional place that won't accept her expired ID we use her passport card. (She doesn't drive, there's no issue of driving on an expired license.)
Freakin' weird.
Edit: I worked at Boeing for eight years, very often in a sec/reserved area. My passport was good there. Buying booze down the street from [Boeing] plant 2, no.
I wouldn't blame a regular store clerk for not knowing what a UN Lassiez-Passier is, especially since it doesn't have the word "passport" in the name. But a passport, especially one from their own country, definitely ought to be recognized.
Seared into my head is my experience of trying to buy alcohol in Boston back in 2009, when I was in town for a wedding. I had just turned 21 so buying alcohol was still novel and exciting. I had multiple bars and liquor stores refuse my valid Illinois license, forcing me to hand alcohol to my father to purchase, and find shady bars that wouldn’t card me. It was extremely frustrating to have to rely on such tactics despite being legally allowed to purchase alcohol.
Not to spoil the joke, but the paper by "O. Hai" and "I. B. Hakkenshit" is satire--I would be absolutely gobsmacked if anyone is actually doing this.
Here's a copy of the paper, if anyone is interested:
https://maggiemcneill.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/synthesizi...
The people who check IDs for medications and alcohol are trained to check DL cards, not passports. It's not surprising that using an ID different from 99.9% of other people causes issues. Although my friend who was a student from Germany never had any issues...
Now, had this happened a few years earlier before she was naturalized.... While her passport did have the standard English labels it was mostly written in bird tracks.
Let’s not turn grad students having a laugh into an actual statement on public policy.
I ran out and wanted to buy some at the local cvs. Now, I’m not a US citizen but I’ve been here a few years already and am a permanent resident. I do not have a US state ID or a US driving license, and in my many years it has _never_ been a problem. Everyone was always happy with my green card as my ID - bars, domestic flights, international flights back to USA, bank account openings etc. But not for purchasing pseudoephedrine at CVS…
I literally stood there with my green card and my European passport and was begging the cvs clerk to sell it to me, but the told me it’s impossible, system doesn’t accept those IDs (and they tried, even showed me their computer screen). And so I had to leave empty handed and with a runny nose, and came back later with an American friend to buy it…
Then you show your drivers license and the pharmacist records it and you pay and finally walk out with your sudafed. If you want to buy several boxes because it's allergy season, well too bad, you can't buy 2 boxes today, you have to come back tomorrow for the second one.
It's actually easier to buy as a prescription, then the Dr can write you a prescription for any amount you need/want.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but... at least this you can't stop me from doing.
So how exactly do the costs/benefits on this "public policy" sum out?
Benefits:
• some grandstanding politicians enjoy the superficial appearance of being "tough on meth"
Costs:
• Americans waste $billions on an ineffective placebo decongestant
• Legitimate manufacturers of a working medicine, pseudoephedrine hcl, lose sales due to extra cost/effort/stigma associated with the purchase. They shift real productive resources – inputs & worker hours – to making & marketing placebos instead.
• Larger cross-border criminal organizations – of the kind that regularly murder politicians south-of-the-border – grow in market-share, sophistication, & power.
• Meth continues to be available at high volume, & low costs, unaffected by the pseudoephedrine limits.
• Recent meth formulations – likely prompted by the limits on the pseudoephedrine-process – seem to create a stronger & more-destructive addiction among abusers: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/11/the-new...
If we don't listen to 'grad students having a laugh' who are pointing out the wasteful absurdities of 'public policy', we'll keep such nonsense destructive rules indefinitely.
The 'serious folks' among politicians & suited 'public-policy' types are derelict in their duties.
Are you suggesting my neighborhood friendly drug dealer could hook me up with some real sudafed? Might be nicer than trying to get it from the pharmacy when I need it.
Because yeah, your neighborhood dealer would make his own meth and would probably have lots of Sudafed.
Most doctors will just write you a prescription and you can get it delivered to your home. Super easy.
Every time you buy the stuff from the pharmacist, they're logging the purchase in a national DB and you're signing an acknowledgement that it's a huge felony to go beyond the limit. But they never tell you where you are vs the limit, and the limits aren't clearly stated. End result: chilling effect.
My mom timed her purchases incorrectly (family of 5 with mom shopping for all at the time) and went past the limit. After that she was flagged and had to have an actual doctor's prescription in order to purchase pseudoephedrine for 6-12 months. That is a HUGE hurdle for most people, and doctors don't want to see people who have cold symptoms. Heck, I was turned away from a CVS Minute Clinic recently because I had COVID like symptoms in the last 7 days. As in refused to see me, even though I had recently tested negative for COVID and had a fever + persistent cough.
Presidents' main differences are on foreign policy which is the one thing nobody asks them about.