Pensieri di un lunatico minore

I am a proto-terrorist

At least, that’s what the government would likely think were they to look back on my childhood. I love chemistry, and throughout life have done a lot of chemical experiments—some turned out well, some not-so-much. I’ve dropped large (500g) quantities of metallic lithium into water to see what would happen¹. I’ve built improvised explosive devices (from coffee creamer and model rocket ignitors) for junior-high class projects², and numerous other ad-hoc “experiments,” some more valid than others. In the end, nobody was hurt, and over the years, I accumulated a nice collect of glass labware. In many ways, it was 100x more interesting than what was going on in school itself.

Now, as P.Z. Myers so accurately points out, there is a whole sale attack on non-commercial chemistry. Whether it be the War on Some Terrorists, or the War on Some Drugs, the rational is always “trust us, we’re protecting you from evil people,” but in the end, it never seems to reduce suffering in the world. Has drug use actually gone down since this War started? I highly doubt it, but a lot of people have been locked up in jail, which keeps a lot of companies rolling in money. I have to present an ID and sign a “registry” anytime I buy decongestants so that I don’t sniffle all day at work because the evil boogey-man of drugs might use them. Seriously, I can’t even buy more than 10 pills at a time now because of this law—or at least because of CVS’ reaction to it.

Have we collectively lost our minds? Or do we think these people are idiots?

¹ Boom! Pretty shiny lights.

² Really, it’s the only use for the stuff. There’s a reason the British call it “whitener,” since it has no other effect.