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What Illegal Substance Do You Crave?
The Federal Government has, for quite a long time, banned the sale or importation of a very wide range of products. Having never had access to those products, most Americans don’t know what they are missing. But they are a loss nevertheless.
I wrote this post to find out what I am missing. But I can start by sharing an example or two of what Americans lack, courtesy of a stupid federal bureaucracy:
Toothpaste. Yes, I wrote about this before. I now smuggle Sensodyne with Novamin into the US from the UK. My dentist “cleanings” are now perfunctory and painless; no plaque or tartar buildup or cavities since I started using this toothpaste with a good electric toothbrush. I am not alone. But, thanks to the FDA’s decision to treat toothpaste as a drug, innovation has been stifled. You cannot buy Sensodyne with Novamin in the United States. Thanks, Uncle Sam.
Indian/Pakistani Mangoes. These are a taste explosion. You can smell them from across the room… sweet, fragrant, complex.. just an amazing fruit. Sliced thin on salmon, or included with whipped cream in crepes, these mangoes are the most decadent fruits I have ever tasted. They are not, however, legal for import into the United States. The block is, I think, a legacy of the early 1930s-era regulations intended to protect American crops from foreign pests. It is the same reason why there are thousands of potato varieties for sale in Peru, but only a handful in the United States.
Mangoes, of course, seem unimportant in the grand scheme of things. But I think that toothpaste and mangoes are good examples of how Americans are denied, by virtue of silly and overbearing federal government – and not even as a result of the Obama years. Blackcurrants, for example, were banned and exterminated in the US in the early 20th century, and are only now starting to make a comeback.
Is there some foreign treat that I really should try next time I am overseas? Much more importantly: I am sure there must be some drugs available overseas that would be lifesavers to Americans… does anyone know about them?
Published in General
Hmmn, if not, I think I see my next vehicle.
It no longer really applies, but when I was younger it always miffed me that Soviet Canuckistan doesn’t allow acne creams to contain benzoyl peroxide in concentrations greater then five per cent. Whenever we went on a ski trip to Vermont or New York State I made sure to drop by a drug store to stock up on contraband ten per cent Clearasil.
It also frustrates me that booze is capped at 40% alcohol-by-volume in Ontario, unless you have a documented industrial purpose for anything greater. No Everclear for me. (Ackshully, the gov’t liquor store does sell one brand of 151 proof rum, but that’s the only overproof booze I’m aware of being available here)
Uh, sure? I mean my wine cellar is filled with 3 carboys of active yeast cultures as we speak…I’m a menace!
I would be inclined to chew on raw coca leaves.
You can get it up here in the Great White North.
Are you kidding? Most of my liquor cabinet is filled with scotches and ryes well over that amount.
I will fight to the end for your right to eat Haggis. An APC would be nice in return though.
How about raw Milk Of The Poppy?
Standard capacity 15-round pistol magazines.
No.
I am more of a tweaker than a tripper.
Supposedly the raw coca leaf has the effects of a nice cup of coffee and the dopamine response in the brain like a cigarette. With none of the negative health effects.
Well, we knew that. We just weren’t sure why before. ;)
You have to have lime (the stone) in your mouth in order for coca leaves to give you a cocaine-like effect.
But I would like to be able to bring coca leaf tea bags from Peru. The unprocessed coca leaf just makes an herbal tea. Coca leaf tea bags are sold in Peru, but it is illegal to bring them into the U.S.
Visit your local hardware store! 1 tablespoon in the laundry (or less depending on load size) and 1/4 teaspoon in the dishwasher.
My plates gleam with freedom, not caked on soap.
To those worried about the environment:
Is that in addition to the usual detergent, or instead of…?
Very much in addition – you’re basically recreating soap.
I think dishwasher detergent is another great example.
so – what is the official reason why trisodium phosphate is no longer in our dishwasher detergent?
I think you’re talking about a different drug which is sometimes marketed as “Novamin”.
The Novamin in toothpaste is a mineral supplement primarily composed of calcium phosphate and silicates. It re-mineralizes tooth enamel.
And while we’re clearing up this topic, does anyone have any direct evidence that the FDA is holding up Novamin for safety reasons? My understanding is that it used to be available OTC in the US, then GSK bought the patent, the existing products were pulled for licensing reasons, and GSK never came out with their own version. Perhaps the FDA was involved, but if they retroactively classified a previously-OTC product as now being prescription only, there should be a paper trail – and I can’t find one.
I think on many shower heads the governor is simply a rubber insert of some kind, easily removable (at least that was the case the last time I put one in). As to the felony, I haven’t checked, but I’d be surprised if messing with your own shower head was prohibited. Typically these regulations are tied to selling something in interstate commerce (so, not okay to sell them without the governor, but okay for the end user to remove it).
The contractor that redid my house told me most people buy two shower heads, one for the inspection and one for him to install afterwards.
My understanding is that the reason was that supposedly phosphates from dishwashers and laundry machine runoff was being reintroduced into the reservoirs and causing algal blooms which caused biodiversity problems in lakes and streams (presumably outside those reservoirs).
California therefore banned phosphates by law from being included and therefore the companies that made detergents changed their formulas to exclude phosphates rather than create a second product just for California or lose out on the California market which, it turns out, is a bad idea since phosphates are necessary to prevent the readherence/reabsorption of, well, filth from clothes, dishes and silverware – hence oily clothes and spotty dishes.
So yes, California outlawed soap. If a response was necessary the appropriate thing to do would be to invent a new technology or improve an existing technology to filter phosphates from the water supply. Perhaps this could even have allowed for – gasp – recycling of collected phosphates that can be reused in soap.
But it was much easier to just ban phosphates than create something new and better and implement it because hippie nonsense .
As I understand (third hand information here) it’s a potent fertilizer, and its being dumped into ponds was leading to such a sharp increase in algae growth that the wetlands were becoming inhospitable to animals.
Several years ago on a trip to Europe I had a terrible sore throat and bought some over the counter lozenges in the local pharmacy. They had some sort of topical anesthetic and were wonderfully effective. Brought them back home with me and used them as needed until all were gone. No over the counter lozenge in this country is any where as effective.
Given that the alternative is death, that sounds more than a bit crazy.
My amateur understanding is that the types of algae (or maybe it was bacteria) that feed on phosphates can deplete the oxygen in lakes/rivers, killing off animal life.
Also, I have to admit that it’s kinda nice not to have big plumes of dirty soap scum floating down the rivers, which used to be very common. The house in which I grew up was on a river, and the giant soap scum plumes were a perennial nuisance.
These days, the water is WAY cleaner than when I grew up there. The water’s even clear enough these days that SCUBA isn’t a complete waste of time.
I dunno how much of that is due to the phase-out of phosphates, increased regulation of sewage treatment in the small towns further upstream, or the zebra mussels (which have taken root in the lakes which feed the river system) filtering the water.
There is an additive in baked goods in Australia that is illegal in the US (for the life of me I don’t know what it is) that makes bread there so much tastier than it is here.
Was it codeine?
I bet it was codeine.
Yep, biodiversity problems. Frankly I’m a bit skeptical of the findings (as I am on any scientific study’s findings because they’re often so awful) and because I resent the shrill demands I strip myself of all the technological advances of the last 200 years in the name of some bizarre Muirian Utopia.
But even if it were true filtering is still a better solution than banning soap.
Do you speak bureaucratese?
http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/cdrh_docs/pdf12/k121698.pdf