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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
Nah. The best thing to come out of Australia also available at Cost Plus is that wide variety of fruit flavored licorice. Kiwi. Raspberry. Strawberry. Orange. Lime. They leave all the US brands in the dust.
Thanks to the original poster, I also use Sensedyne with Novamin. My teeth are much less sensitive and shorter dental cleanings. I ordered my first batch on Ebay from India; replenished when a friend of a friend brought some from England. We’re going to Ireland next month and a supply of this toothpaste will be among my souvenirs.
You do realize, hopefully, that if you chew coca, you will pee positive on a drug test. The active ingredient does enter your body, but unless you ingest lime with it, it is still chemically bonded to something else. But the drug test finds it anyway.
Same with too many poppy seeds.
I was given a cup of coca test when checking into a hotel in Cusco, Peru (altitude: 10,000 feet). Didn’t really feel anything. I think the whole point was to get any kind of hot beverage into you to ward off altitude sickness. That’s why you should hydrate often when you’re up there so high.
No, they won’t ship it to the U.S. I tried.
There’s a restaurant in Reykjavik that had a signboard offering a seal and puffin dinner, which I objected to (I adore puffins).
My order confirmed? Maybe it’ll get rejected later?
There once was a puffin just the shape of a muffin
And he lived on an island in the deep blue sea.
He ate little fishes, which were most delicious,
And he had them for supper, and he had them for tea.
But that poor little puffin, he couldn’t play nothin’
Cause he hadn’t anybody to play with at all.
So he sat on his island and he cried for a while and
He felt very lonely and he felt very small.
Then along came those fishes and they said, “If you wishes
You can have us for playmates, instead of for tea!”
Now they all play together, in all kinds of weather,
And the puffin eats pancakes, like you and like me.
I don’t understand. Navamin might cause antibiotic resistance? Would you have to eat several tubes a day?
Cars. We have an impressive variety of cars available in the United States, but still there are some fascinating cars available elsewhere that we can’t get in the US (most of which I can’t afford, but it still fits the principle).
“Cultivated” would have been a better word. I always think of the better word after I hit Comment.
What you need to understand is that the FDA is staffed entirely by the kids who used to eat paste in school.
I was going to mention it, but when I looked up the legality of OTC codeine, just to double-check, every page I found said it was legal in the US as well.
I sometimes find instances where something I thought was illegal is actually merely uncommon or hard-to-find in my particular market, either because of lack of demand, or because of red tape that makes the item too much hassle to stock even though it’s not illegal.
In the UK, it is remarkable what one can get certified as street-legal.
Up here in the Great White North, there are a few small auto companies that make vehicles for export only, because the red tape of selling their products domestically are too onerous.
I’d like to know where to get some. We used cheracol cough syrup with codeine when I was a kid (back when doctors made house calls…). It worked and tasted great and no one even remotely considered abusing it. But it sure was nice that it tasted good when we had to take the medicine. These days I can’t even get a doc to write a prescription for cough syrup with codeine unless I have an active nasty cough and make an (expensive!) office visit. I do have some Vicodin left from a surgery a few years ago and a pharmacist suggested chopping one in half and taking it with standard OTC cough syrup to get the same coverage. Still stinks! At least I have that option.
That’s the sort of thing I would do just to say I did it.
FDA must have gotten the idea. It’s available now only as liver-flavored chews. Ewwwws!
No, “raise” really was the mot juste.
Raise as one would children or the American flag. Patriotic stuff, that kohlrabi.
Individual states may impose additional restrictions, whether banning sale in-state or, as you noted, while not making dispensation (whether OTC or prescription, depending) illegal, make it so much of a hassle that pharmacies just don’t bother trying anymore. From what I’ve seen, those apparently “schedule V” OTC cough syrups you’re talking about fall into this category in many states.
I’ve been prescribed Tramadol occasionally both before and after it was moved to Schedule IV. Once it was rescheduled, not only federal restrictions, but either my state’s or the pharmacy chain’s own in-house restrictions (and possibly both) kicked in, leading me to spend a few days in misery after I was discharged too late from the hospital to pick up my prescription “in time” (even 24-hour pharmacies wouldn’t dispense it “too suspiciously late” at night after rescheduling) and also discovered the prescription could no longer be easily transferred from one Walgreens location to another.
Thanks for that link. I love that opium is only Schedule V at doses of less than one part-per-thousand.
Hey, have they they tested poppyseed filling yet?
I haven’t read all the comments, so some are surely repeats, but…
The Bible says that for lack of vision, the people perish. This is a perfect illustration. Ronald Magnamus recommended a book called the 5,000 Year Leap. Its basic premise is that after 5,000 years of recorded history of men moving goods and people with animals, within 200 years of freedom, we had a man on the moon.
Now that Uncle Sugar has deprived us of the freedom, who knows what we’ve lost? The cure for cancer? The cure for heart disease? I have no idea. It’s impossible to see what wasn’t invented or wasn’t made, but I wish I had it, nonetheless.
This has not been my experience. My new, supposedly top flight, toilet doesn’t use much water, but it doesn’t get all the bacteria out. I *never* used to get that little dingy ring around the water or any color on the bowl between cleanings and now there is. It’s just not completely replacing the water like it used to.
Yeah, but I live in NY, so…
If you call that living!
I’m a bit behind but, Just heard the comment on the podcast! Bought some off eBay. It’s coming from England. Wow! Can’t wait to try it out.