Another Life Tarnished By Drugs--Indiana Grandma Behind Bars!

I remember the old SNL skit where Dan Ackroyd and Bill Murray stormed into an apartment dressed as police officers and senselessly beat two suspected lesbians to death. In the end the X-police sadly lamented that homosexuality had claimed two more victims.

We have entered into that same state of ridiculousness in America where law enforcement officials can with a straight face defend themselves for handcuffing Grandma and tossing her in the back of a police cruiser for the hardened crime of buying two packages of cold medicine in less than one week's time.

When Sally Harpold bought cold medicine for her family back in March, she never dreamed that four months later she would end up in handcuffs.

Now, Harpold is trying to clear her name of criminal charges, and she is speaking out in hopes that a law will change so others won’t endure the same embarrassment she still is facing.

“This is a very traumatic experience,” Harpold said.

Harpold is a grandmother of triplets who bought one box of Zyrtec-D cold medicine for her husband at a Rockville pharmacy. Less than seven days later, she bought a box of Mucinex-D cold medicine for her adult daughter at a Clinton pharmacy, thereby purchasing 3.6 grams total of pseudoephedrine in a week’s time.

Those two purchases put her in violation of Indiana law 35-48-4-14.7, which restricts the sale of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, or PSE, products to no more than 3.0 grams within any seven-day period.

Pseudoephedrine is used in the manufacture of methamphetamine. Her ignorance of this fact is no excuse. Her ignorance of the law is no excuse either. Come to think of it, the fact that she had no intent to abuse the product or make meth is no excuse either. Granny has broken the law. Pick her up!

Ken over at Popehat sums it up nicely.

Shut up, Sally Harpold and her supporters. Shut up, or it means you hate poor little meth babies. Shut up, or it means you are in favor of people destroying their lives with methamphetamine. Shut up, and don’t question government officials when they come up with increasingly arbitrary, hare-brained schemes calculated to make them look like they are doing something. Shut up, and love the little children.

Read Ken's whole take on things.

Then we can all lament the fact that illegal drugs may have helped ruin another life.