The Underground Conservative

This is the type of absurdity that happens with idiotic nanny state legislation.

An Indiana grandmother is under arrest, charged with violating the state law limiting the amount of cold medicine that can be purchased by an individual in a seven-day period.

CLINTON — 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.

When the police came knocking at the door of Harpold’s Parke County residence on July 30, she was arrested on a Vermillion County warrant for a class-C misdemeanor, which carries a sentence of up to 60 days in jail and up to a $500 fine. But through a deferral program offered by Vermillion County Prosecutor Nina Alexander, the charge could be wiped from Harpold’s record by mid-September.

It’s Kafkaesque.

Laws designed to curb the production of methamphetamine are now turning law-abiding citizens into criminals and forcing them to deal with crusading DAs and having them subjected to the humiliation of be escorted in handcuffs from their residences, booked, fingerprinted, photographed and tossed into a holding cell.

For what? Just what has been accomplished by this?

Nothing. We know it, and they know it.

The real heel in this was Alexander, the DA, who clearly was intending to send ordinary citizens a message that she intended on making no distinction between law-abiding citizens running afoul of an idiotic law and real criminals intending to manufacture meth for distribution.

While the law was written with the intent of stopping people from purchasing large quantities of drugs to make methamphetamine, the law does not say the purchase must be made with the intent to make meth.

“The law does not make this distinction,” Alexander said.

If the law said “with intent to manufacture methamphetamine,” no one could be arrested until it was proven that the drug actually was used to make meth, the prosecutor said.

And that certainly wasn’t the intent of the law, either. It was written to limit access to the key ingredient in meth — pseudoephedrine — and thereby to stop the clandestine “mom and pop” meth labs that were cooking drugs throughout the area.

Just as with any law, the public has the responsibility to know what is legal and what is not, and ignorance of the law is no excuse, the prosecutor said.

“I’m simply enforcing the law as it was written,” Alexander said.

No, you are being an idiot. And a first-class jerk to boot. As a prosecutor, you have prosecutorial discretion. The police were not sent to this woman’s door until you chose to have them sent there.

Here’s how the bust came down:

[Vermillion County Sheriff Bob Spence] explained that the process leading to Harpold’s arrest involved an officer checking area pharmacy purchase records, and coming up with about 40 purchases that violated the law.

That information was then taken to the prosecutor, whose staff drew up the probable cause affidavits to be filed in court. A judge then found probable cause and issued arrest warrants, and the sheriff’s department is required by statute to see that the warrants are served.

You see, at that point, Alexander had the discretion not to let this travesty proceed. She is the one who not only just allowed it to happen but actually greenlighted it with enthusiasm.

Alexander said she is working with Harpold about the charge, but the prosecutor asserts that Harpold did break the law with her purchases and is being held accountable.

“I do want people to know that we will check the pharmacy records and we will prosecute people who violate this law,” Alexander said.

Sieg Heil, Madam Prosecutor. You’re going after average everyday citizens going about their business and posing no threat to anyone. How many real criminals are you going to let escape justice in your crusade to throw Grandma in the slammer and leave her with an arrest record?

I know, I know. We heard all about the intentions of this law when it was passed that we needed this to fight the spread of meth. But we all knew what would happen eventually, didn’t we?

Folks, Nina Alexander is stuck on stupid.