That's not true. First they don't just sell it to you, they take your ID, record your information, send that to the state, and then sell it you. Going to one store after another after another collecting lots of pills isn't the only thing that will trip people up either. I've had times when I was told I couldn't purchase allergy medication because I'd purchased some already. I had recently, for the family, but I was traveling and didn't have the medication with me.
I wasn't going around to a bunch of stores buying mass quantities of allergy medications, I'd made a purchase once and several days/weeks after tried to make a second purchase. I can't imagine I'm the only person alive who has failed to bring a medication with them while traveling, or suddenly had need for it when they didn't have some immediately on their person, or made a purchase and soon after lost it, only to discover that a pointless restriction brought about by a failed war on drugs prevented a simple purchase fully intended for treatment of a medical condition.
Maybe a more sane threshold for treating people like criminals would help the situation, but honestly the entire program seems like a waste of time of money at this point.
Really, if we're this wound up about the situation, the answer is simple: just make Sudafed require a prescription, like a zillion other medications. The problem with Sudafed is extremely straightforward: it is a very trivial chemical reaction away from being methamphetamine.
Some states have made the requirement for prescriptions, but it hasn't done them much good https://www.huffpost.com/entry/meth-laws-oregons-prescriptio...
I'm no fan of meth labs, but this just seems like a bad solution being made worse by poor implementation.
Requiring a prescription for common cold medicine raises the price of cold relief from $12 to $100+.