When the Mexican government banned pseudoephedrine in 2007, the drug cartels diversified into heroin and marijuana. They also began making low-potency dextro-levo-methamphetamine using a non-pseudoephedrine method. And they moved the manufacture of high potency D meth in the West to central California. Now, they hire people to go from pharmacy to pharmacy in California, Nevada and Arizona buying up pseudoephedrine-based cold medications - the essential ingredient to the high potency D meth that addicts want most.
These smurfers remove the box and send the bubble wrap to the California super-labs. The pseudoephedrine returns to places like Carson City and Reno as high potency D meth - maiming babies, wrecking brains, inspiring crime and ruining lives.
The question that faces the Nevada Legislature this session in SB 203 is, "Is it better to allow the retail profits from selling great quantities of pseudoephedrine-based cold medicine or better to protect our children and families?"
The question for the public is, "Do we say enough to those making a profit from meth?"
SB 203 will put pseudoephedrine behind the prescription counter and end smurfing. To my mind, this is the most important piece of legislation to come down the road in years. If Nevada does, California may do it. Oregon has already done it. It's time to take back our communities from this scourge.
Tell the Senate Health and Human Services Committee to support SB 203.
Chris Bayer
Carson City
The times are terrifying. Not only are we scared of wars, acts of nature, terrorism, radiation from Japan and the ever-increasing price of gas, we are more than apprehensive of the future, where the current debt will leave the next generation, how the environment will melt under intense scrutiny and when everything will start making sense again.
What we need is a distraction, a high-quality, consistent, professional, mesmerizing, fun, community event, that builds confidence, brings people together and gives life meaning. Western Nevada Musical Theater Company has been giving Carson City and Northern Nevada exactly that for more than 20 years now.
Not only that, but director Stephanie Arrigotti and choreographer Gina Kaskie-Davis have devoted time, energy and passion, selflessly, time and again, to bring light to so many in the surrounding area.
Sadly, not only have the politicians failed to save the future, they have also managed to sacrifice one of the few things that make now bearable. WNMTC may have to close due to budgetary cuts imposed by an increasingly inward-facing Legislature upon the education system. A state treasure is about to be lost, to be sacrificed for no real gain and much, much anguish.
Now is the time to say no, the time to make your voice heard, time to S.O.S. Save Our Souls. Save the musical theatre program at Western Nevada College. Save WNMTC, save the future for us all.
Steve Burton
Carson City
Could you please tell me why people in this country are starving, homeless, jobless and need medical help which they cannot afford, yet the big shots in this country can give orders to blow up a country and turn around and give them $800 million or billions of dollars to rebuild, feed them and give them all the medical help they need?
Now we have our nose in Libya, and for what? So we can give them billions also? Every time there is an uproar somewhere in the world, the U.S. has got to step in and try to stop the fighting.
If they would stop helping others and pay attention to their own people, then maybe we would not be in the mess we're in. And how about all the money the country has loaned to other countries? This is total B.S. We have Americans here who need the help because our money goes overseas.
I'm on dialysis which runs $20,000 a month, medication, transportation problems, and I am supposed to pay for this with $1,400 a month. Yeah, sure, anyone can afford the outrageous prices. We help everyone else but the poor Americans here in the United States.
It is not fair to the taxpayer to suffer for the mistakes those big wheels up there on Capitol Hill make. I am so angry that this country cannot take care of business here, but can take care of other countries' problems.
Lester McGarrah
Carson City
