In a story that would be touching in the ordinary context, an 88 year old man and his 85 year old girlfriend built a portable water purification business from a dream to a reality. Nothing wrong there; such things are supposed to be part of the American Dream.
But now, their business is being ruined by one of the most unaccountable and tyrannical bureaucracies in the history of government, the DEA:
88-year-old Bob Wallace, and his 85-year-old girlfriend, Marjorie Ottenberg fell in love 35 years ago backpacking to the tops of the highest peaks in the world.
Wallace is a Stanford educated engineer and Ottenberg is a former chemist and decades ago they came up with a water purification product for backpackers like themselves called Polar Pure out of their garage in Saratoga, Calif.
“For an old guy with nothing else to do, this is something that keeps us occupied,” says Wallace.
Today, Wallace and Ottenberg are fighting the Drug Enforcement Administration and state officials to continue to operate their business. Why? The DEA says that drug dealers are using their product to make methamphetamine.
The DEA says meth heads are interested in Polar Pure’s key ingredient, iodine crystals.
Too lazy to go after the meth heads, they have to go after perfectly legitimate business, destroying the dream of two honest elderly Americans. You don’t have to be opposed to the Drug War to be opposed to such tyranny.
Wallace and Ottenberg’s business will of course be ruined, because they cannot possibly comply with the laws demands that they pay huge regulatory fees, plus “register with the state and feds, report any suspicious activity and keep track of each and ever person who bought a bottle of their product.” Nor can their customers, which included camping stores and online outlets that stocked their product. They are being wiped out, and the DEA dismissively calls this “collateral damage”:
Instead of dealing with the new regulations they just dropped the product, effectively killing Wallace and Ottenberg’s business.
“Any time you deal with a government it’s a hassle,” says Ottenberg.
A spokeswoman for the DEA told the San Jose Mercury News that Wallace was “collateral damage.”
I suppose I could ask just what provision of the Constitution gives the DEA the power to shut down dealers in iodine. After all, I ask these questions all the time.
To no avail. We are no longer governed, but we are ruled. This government is monstrous. It no longer resembles what the founders envisioned, and very few people care. Those who do are ridiculed as cranks.
OK, so I’m a crank. I admit it. But that does not make me wrong. The DEA is operating outside of constitutional parameters so routinely that it has become a law unto itself.
And I don’t just mean asserting the power to regulate anything it wants. One of the hallmarks of tyranny is the detention of citizens without a hearing.
Representative Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) sent a letter to DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart asking the agency to comply with an inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the detention of 23-year-old Daniel Chong. The UC San Diego engineering student was arrested during a drug raid, interrogated for four hours, then locked in a holding cell and left there for five days without food, water, or access to a toilet.
During those five days, Chong was forced to drink his own urine. Fearing that he would die in the cell, he broke the lens of his glasses and attempted to carve a message to his mother on his arm using a shard. Chong then tried to commit suicide by swallowing the broken pieces of his eye glasses. He was discovered unconscious and covered in feces, and admitted to a San Diego hospital suffering from dehydration, kidney failure, and a punctured esophagus.
Got that? The DEA held a suspect for five days and nearly tortured him to death. This is the United States?
And how about the severely injured woman who, after surgery for a shattered knee cap, went to the drug store to fill a perfectly legitimate pain killer prescription, and found herself hauled away:
The pharmacy called Lenhart to ask her exactly what time she would be in pick up her prescription. She thought it was odd, but told the pharmacy what time she would be there.
Still on crutches and unable to drive, a friend of Lenhart’s, drove her to a CVS Pharmacy in Oak Cliff.
She wasn’t able to pick up her prescription because a police officer arrived to pick her up.
“He was like ‘we need to go outside,’” she said. “I was on crutches and I had a permanent IV line in my arm. I had a big leg brace. I asked him if it was necessary and he said yes and he rather policingly escorted me out the front door and into the back of a waiting patrol car.”
Never mind that it was another bureaucratic mistake. This severely injured woman spent the night in jail. After she was finally released on bond, she was charged with a felony.
The DEA, of course, is behind this racket too. They have unconstitutionally delegated to themselves authority to regulate every prescription for every controlled substance sold in every pharmacy in the United States, and as Radley Balko explains in his analysis of the case, pharmacists and doctors live in terror of them:
These idiots couldn’t even bother to call the woman’s doctor before tossing her in a jail cell.
Lenhart’s story has been making its way around the web the past few days, and has been generating the appropriate outrage. But it shouldn’t be all that surprising. This is the perfectly predictable outcome of all this painkiller hysteria of late. It’s bad enough coming from the usual drug warriors. But because there’s a big evil pharmaceutical corporation to play the villain, we now get progressive outlets like ProPublica, and Alternet and Salon spitting out the government’s hype without the least bit of skepticism—or concern for pain patients.
You can’t really blame the pharmacist, here. She risks arrest and criminal prosecution if some overeager prosecutor looking to make a name for himself decides she hasn’t been sufficiently suspicious of her customers. Think about that. The government will now throw you in jail for failing to be suspicious enough of your fellow citizens. (And not just with painkillers — remember this monstrous injustice?)
Don’t blame her employer, either. The DEA recently shut down two CVS stores in Florida because federal drug cops thought the stores should have been turning away more people who came to fill pain medication prescriptions. Not only that, the agencies also attempted to shut down the wholesaler who supplies those stores for not being sufficiently suspicious of them, a move that would have left thousands of patients in several states without access to the medication they need.
The government has created a poisonous, paranoid atmosphere in which every player in the painkiller process from manufacturer to patient has been deputized to police every other player, to the point where anyone who doesn’t continually question the motives and actions of everyone else risks losing his livelihood, or even his freedom.
Yes, and that includes 88 year old water purifiers.
Collateral damage? How far does it go?
MORE: I have to say, it never occurred to me that I might someday be InstaLanched by Sarah. (who is guest blogging for Glenn Reynolds). I consider this to be proof that anything is possible.
Thank you, dear, dear Sarah Hoyt.
Comments welcome, agree or disagree.
Comments
57 responses to ““Collateral damage.” How the DEA defines your business, your freedom, and your life.”
A true story from the hinterlands –
I was having breakfast at The Diner recently. There’s a large community table that seats 8 to 10. Everyone tells jokes, talks politics, and generally gossips. In walks the local sheriff deputy to get a coffee to go. You could hear a pin drop. He nods, pays, and leaves without a word.
The police are now the enemy.
WOD = Tyranny
And for those of you who are a little slow on the uptake, if you support tyrannical laws, you are a tyrant.
I’m not generally given to cursing (either in real life or online), but f*ck that sh!t. This federal government has met and exceeded the criterion of, as the Declaration of Independence puts it, “becom[ing] destructive of these ends [i.e. securing the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, whilst deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed].
I’m sorry, that last comment didn’t end up making much sense. I guess words fail at this point.
Correct. The cops are the enemy. So is every agent of every Gov agency.
No exceptions.
[…] We are no longer governed. We are ruled. Yes, that IS about the size of it. […]
Be careful of “one size fits all”. In my small mountain town, our County Sheriff and as many of his staff as he can get in are going to OATHKEEPER training for Peace Officers … with the express approval of our County Commissioners. Our local city cops are drinking coffee with us. They are on our side.
Check out how your local cops feel about their oath to the Constitution. Then decide.
I know what to do! Let’s nominate a RINO!
Do not miss the KEY point in this. The prosecutors, the DEA, et. al., are unlawfully practicing medicine without a license!!
Unlawfully.
Practicing Medicine.
Without a License.
Imposing Medical Dicta.
They have NO CREDENTIALS to impose.
Upon Patients.
They HAVE NEVER ATTENDED.
And CANNOT LAWFULLY ATTEND.
And they do so WITH GUILTY KNOWLEDGE OF THEIR LAWLESSNESS.
And they do this to enhance the perpetuation of their professional advance and personal financial enrichment.
They cannot blame the job. Where does the law or agency regulation say they may practice medicine without a license or otherwise tortiously interfere in the primacy of the physician-patient relationship?
It doesn’t.
We are ruled if we allow ourselves to be ruled, or perhaps if a majority who wants us to be ruled decides that we should be ruled.
We live in a Federal Republic, and if we don’t like those who try to “rule” us, all we have to do is vote for those who will represent us. Or be those people who will represent our constituents … or at least hold our representatives feet to the fire if we feel we are not being represented.
In a representative government responsibility has to be shared. For too long governmental authority at all levels has been permitted to grow. It’s time to reverse the pendulum.
My guess is that the water purification business will still be going a year from now.
Not with the present owners. They will have sold it for pennies on the dollar to Kip Chalmer’s Ma or some other friend of government. Doesn’t matter if we keep Obama or switch to Obama lite in January.
Same old, same old.
Our only hope, albeit slim, is that Paul can get the Repo nomination.
He has consistently polled in a tie with Obama in November. If he can tie Obama with all the marginalizing and ignoring of him going on, imagine what he would do in an election.
John Henry
“The police are now the enemy.”
I never felt this, and now only some of the time.
I think it started about the time that all localities got fancy-schmancy new fire engines (ambulances that get 5 gallons to the mile, many of them, since houses don’t burn down at the same rate as they used to) and new unionized fire fighters, plus lots of federal bucks for local law enforcement. The vibe that I feel is that these guys are paid for by the Feds and loyal to them. An odd and new feeling.
[…] “Collateral damage.” How the DEA defines your business, your freedom, and your life. […]
One teeny-tiny change that would, I think, -crush- this sort of insanity would be:
Revoke ‘sovereign immunity’ for -any- Constitutional violation.
@ Subotai Bahadur May 9th, 2012
So true. There are many, many good people in government service.
If we don’t help them win the internal arguments against the psychotics and predators in their midst, they will LOSE.
And when they lose, WE LOSE.
At the bottom of these agency and law enforcement abuses are significant and unattended mental health problems among the administrators, staff attorneys and prosecutors.. and the coverups they desperately maintain.
What is “Fast and Furious” — what about innocents murdered by judges and prosecutors sending LEOs to the wrong house.
What of the ugly secret of rampant alcoholism, malignancies of narcissism and prescription drug impairment among the prosecutorial, legislative, academic and staff lawyer elites?
And wow, if you think the DEA is bad for individuals (it is) you should try interacting with the DOJ or the SEC. There are so many felonies and so many bureaucratic hassles that carry felony penalties for failing to obey them that it is crippling companies throughout the US and the world. Not only are the regulations too numerous to read or catalogue, they are often nonsensical, directly contradictory, impossible to reason through to a meaningful conclusion…they are incredibly, stultifyingly burdensome and enfeebling. They only reason they are not described as Kafka-esque, is because that wouldn’t accurately describe how much worse than Kafka’s creation they really are.
Yes. Sovereign immunity MUST be revoked.
To allow them to remain “super citizens” who operate above the law only ensures the statistically unavoidable distribution of psychotics and predators on government payrolls will gain more institutional power and become more pernicious as their lack of shame and perverse ambition propels them to outcompete their psychologically and emotionally healthy coworkers.
Tyranny without malignancy of personality has no enforcers.
Jim,MtnViewCA,USA: Bullseye – lots of federal bucks for law enforcement
And in California lots of money from Sacramento goes back to the counties.
Wow, am I slow. I just figured out why there will never be an end to the war on drugs. There’s a damn agency for that.
On the horizon:
* Government control of cars on highways
* Government control of our diet, sleep, and health via real-time, internal monitors
* TBD
[…] MORE Rate this: Share this:FacebookTwitterDiggLinkedInRedditStumbleUponEmailPrintLike this:LikeBe the first to like this post. […]
All of this started under the Bush Administration yet all you people say is Obama is an awful President because he is black and cares. About the civil rights of women, children, minorities, and gays. Bush started all of this by telling us Ay-Ryan’s and Moooslims were our enemies and said they were evil terrorists. Stop blaming the nearest black man and see the real issue, the criminal Bush.
Sorry, but peddling iodine crystals by mail order w/o documentation is NOT a legitimate business. You didn’t mention the part of the story where LE found Polar Pure bottles at meth lab sites. It sounds to me like the DEA cut these folks some slack due to their age and lack of ill intention. Otherwise they’d be doing time.
One of these 2 was a chemist and would have known that traditional iodine tablets for water purification are iodine mixed with PVP (also called Betadine; you can buy it at the drug store). Selling these would be a legit business. She would also have known that iodine is an important route to making meth from Sudafed.
On the Chong story I hope Rep. Hunter gets some heads rolling at DEA. The Lenhart story sounds like it involves a retarded local cop and not the DEA.
Brian G: This has nothing to do with the president. It’s about the (wholly unconstitutional) power of the bureaucracy to make law. Read for comprehension.
Perhaps we should learn a lesson from the the EPA and crucify the DEA.
People say the United States is becoming a police state. Too late to worry about it becoming, folks. We’re already there.
Everything in the federal government needs an expiration date. Term limit the judges, the congresscritters and all of the bloated, power crazed agencies they create.
[…] were attacked by the EPA (Sackett v. The EPA), but now from blogger Eric at Classical Values, comes this: In a story that would be touching in the ordinary context, an 88 year old man and his 85 year old […]
Re: “We live in a Federal Republic, and if we don’t like those who try to “rule” us, all we have to do is vote for those who will represent us.” Average American, that sounds reasonable, but in fact, voting doesn’t change anything when both major political parties two sides of the same coin. Put another way, the Crips are different than the Bloods, but both are still criminal gangs. The Democrats and Republicans are different, but equally criminal and corrupt in their own ways. The “establishment” party has hijacked both sides of the game, leaving the voters with no real choice. Our rulers know that third-parties would normally present an atractive option under such circumstances, which is one reason barriers to entry are so high for challengers who do not belong to the current two-party cartel.
Brian G., learn to spell before you try arguing with the adults… and our rejection of Obama has nothing to do with his race, and everything to do with his values and policies… and the fact that he is shredding the constitution and subverting the rule of law. Basic civics 101 – you flunk.
IMO soverign immunity, qualified immunity, and such are unconstitutional titles of nobility.
Don’t forget people with allergies or colds. I had my places raided about 10 years ago simply because I buy a package of generic actifed once a month.
No apology or anything, either.
There was a retired NASA scientist killed a few years ago by a local swat drug raid. Apparently his cable repair guy was paid by the cops to search people’s bathrooms and nark on drug suspects. They raided his house in the middle of the night on a no knock warrant.
This 80+ year old man came out of his bedroom with a hand gun because he thought the masked gunmen were home invasion robbers. Turns out he was right. The police shot him dead and found 3 bottles of oxytocin. Two empty, one half used and all proscribed by his doctor for back pain. He had simply not tossed away the empty ones yet and that was enough for a no knock cable guy warrant. The police then seized his car, and his antique gun collection, and any other valuables they could under drug seizure laws.
Now tell me what’s the difference between those local cops and Nazi SS? No one I know trusts the cops. We view them as predators looking for anything they can to send us to jail for. This is not a GOP vs Dem issue either. Both parties are equally for the fascist police state they’ve created.
Freedom is a lie. We think we are free, but in reality, we are not.
All federal employees are against us. The majority of cops (especially in large cities and many suburban areas) are also not on our side. If obama wins re-election watch for some major UN directed gun control stuff……keep your powder dry folks.
Now what if – for an October surprise – Obama comes out against the Drug War?
http://classicalvalues.com/2012/05/does-obama-have-a-plan-for-victory/
Hey! If we make it as hard to buy cold medicine as it is to buy a rifle, that will stop tweakers
Oh, wait. It won’t. They’ll come up with a recipe for meth that uses less cold medicine.
[…] need more evidence of how out of control our government has become then read on . This story from Classical Values will turn your stomach . ” Collateral Damage” indeed […]
Revoke their sovereign immunity.
Furthermore, lock them up with the a-holes they put away. No exceptions.
[…] in the myriad of government bureaucracy, just waiting for another terrible accident to happen? (See Eric’s recent Classical Values post for other infuriating examples of the DEA’s “collateral […]
After 20 years in the military and another 20 as a defense contractor, I’m familiar government BS. If you know the system, catching these idiots in over reach can be fun. As an avionics manufacturer, our product was classified as a weapon system and had export restrictions. To stay clear of customs, we used international freight forwarders.
The RAF wanted to upgrade their systems so they sent one ship set to us along with an engineer who was to learn to perform the modification. He decided to bring the units as baggage. Customs agents detained him and impounded the “Queen’s” hardware. Our freight forwarded got him off the hook, but we were put on a watch list.
In 1994, the USAF called me in a panic. They needed an emergency modification that I had been recommending for 2 years. With the support of a 4 star, we rewrote the rules. We needed antennas from England, but had no contract. With company money, we bought $350K worth of hardware including the antennas and had them imported duty free. In 2 days, we modified 78 aircraft. In 10 days, we invaded Haiti.
Six months later, I got a letter from customs telling me I had illegally imported weapon components and the fine would be several $100K. The letter said it was not an invoice and that I could have the amount adjudicated through the firms listed below. The firms were retired customs agents who would lower the fine and kick back some of my fee.
I called customs and said we would not adjudicate. Bill me. There was a pause. He asked what we were going to do. I said, pay the fine, add 10% for material handling, 21% general and administrative cost, 10% profit and bill the USAF. They own the antennas. He panicked.
Two days later, I got another letter saying the case had been dropped. I called him again and told him customs was being very reasonable. He responded with Al Gore’s line, “We’re reinventing government,” Yeah, right!
“sharkjumper: Sorry, but peddling iodine crystals by mail order w/o documentation is NOT a legitimate business.”
Says who? You? I happen to have met this fine old cat a few times over the years and he has been selling these tabs, complete with trademark and patent protection, for almost 30 years. Polar Pure was a pioneering product. I’m sorry, you and the DEA don’t get to, with one fell swoop, declare what is and isn’t a legitimate business.
“sharkjumper: Sorry, but peddling iodine crystals by mail order w/o documentation is NOT a legitimate business.”
I’m an Assistant Scoutmaster. Before I decided to invest a significant amount of money into a backpacking filter pump I used Polar Pure bottles for making water drinkable in the back country. This stuff has been on sale for years, well before fools began killing themselves cooking up meth. But bureaucrats don’t see people as people; they see them as cells in a spreadsheet. They can’t be bothered actually learning about the people and the things they are dealing with. They don’t need to. They’ve got the power and it’s there to be used.
I bet that lady voted for drug war candidates all her life. Ditto the water guy and his wife.
No pity here. The American people are ruled, AND THEY DESERVE IT.
“Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security deserves neither and will loose both” Benjamin Franklin
[…] the Idiots Who Support It – Piss Me Off Posted on May 9, 2012 8:09 pm by Bill Quick Classical Values » “Collateral damage.” How the DEA defines your business, your freedom, and yo… The DEA says meth heads are interested in Polar Pure’s key ingredient, iodine […]
Yes, dissolve the DEA. And while we’re at it, let’s get rid of the; DHS, BATF, and a host of other worthless (if not outright dangerous) bureaucracies. Also, as a matter of course, we should outright ban all public employee unions.
The point is that the FDR New Deal Supreme Court secretly changed the Constitution to allow the rise of the Administrative State. The Constitution used to require a separation of powers: law making, law interpreting, and law enforcing. Law making required approval of both houses of Congress and a signature of the President. Not anymore. The DEA makes its own laws, enforces them, and ajudicates who has violated them.
[…] ClassicalValues […]
[…] Some horrific stories of what the bureaucracy of our government is up to. […]
Kender, you are not helping. You paint all of us Federal employees with the same brush, blaming all of us for what only some do. Believe it or not, there are conservatives in Federal employment, and we do have a serious problem with such blatant abuse of power and misappropriation of funds, and many more besides. The problem is that the system is so self-protecting that genuine reform can only come from the top-down. The budget needs a hatchet taken to it in order to hack off the corruption and give both liberty and the legitimate functions of government a chance to survive.
I’m waiting for the day that the War on Drugs becomes the War on Drug Warriors. I fully expect that in the not too distant future, some Drug Warriors and/or an enabling persecutor (Sic!) or two, gets tased without warning, (by someone wearing a full coverage motorcycle helmet instead of a ski mask) and then gets some ‘Collateral Damage’ of his own.
I just cannot see this situation continuing without a critical mass being reached and then things will happen. And it will grow quickly once it starts.
There may be ‘good cops’, but from the outside the 98% enable the “bad” 2%, meaning that they are ALL bad.
The actions of repressive institutions like the DEA, ATF, even EPA are going to give them results which they will view as “Unintended Consequences”.
When I travel, it is not uncommon for me to travel with a firearm. When driving through a state which doesn’t honor my permit to carry, I unload and lock up the gun as per the McLure-Volkmer Act of 1986. However, some states-particularly New York and New Jersey, have little regard for that law. The last time I traveled through New York, mindful of recent pronouncements by Janet Napolitano and the “MIAC” Report, I removed the Ron Paul bumper sticker from my car. At age 60, I never thought I’d live to see the day I’d feel the need to do that. I was asked why I felt it necessary, and replied with the statement that one must “pick one’s battles.” How sad.
[…] Eric on a case I’ve covered before: We are no longer governed, but we are ruled. This government is monstrous. […]
[…] G.G. flagged this tale of a Polar Pure's "precursor chemical" woes: “Collateral damage.” How the DEA defines your business, your freedom, and your life. […]
“The DEA is operating outside of constitutional parameters so routinely that it has become a law unto itself.”
The default in government is now oppression and overreach.
[…] […]
Yet I can still buy iodine and make my own, right?
And in case it wasn’t clear, I meant I could make my own life saving water treatment, not my own meth.
[…] More evils from the War on Drugs. […]