Almost Heaven...for Pharmacists

When a tag for this article came up in my Gmail, I couldn't resist clicking to see if Utah was in the top ten. It is not. With the odd exception of Iowa, the top 10 is completely dominated by the Southeast. The article links high rates of medication with high rates of obesity, diabetes, and / or tobacco usage. Not mentioned in the article, as I recall, was the fact that obesity and its accompanying health problems are linked to poverty, and poverty correlates with race. So no surprise that most of the poorest states in the country, with the highest percentages of African-Americans, are among the most medicated. Which comes back to the fact that it is very expensive both to be poor and to blithely allow poverty to persist. But maybe it's a price we're willing to pay in order to carry on with our biases.

California is in the bottom ten. You don't need a prescription for the Napa Valley (though technically you might need one for other medications grown in Northern CA).

they be stealin'

This morning I had a small, so I thought, unopened container of raspberry yogurt I got from the hotel continental breakfast. I put it in my plastic ziploc bag full of the small bottles of shampoo, conditioner, mouthwash, etc. for airport security. But they really stuck to their guns (or whatever compliance-promoting / protective devices they have) about the 3.4 ounces rule. The lady said, "Oh...I'll have to take your yogurt. It's more than 3.4 ounces. Would you like to go back so you can eat it?" (I thought, I know you're doing the right thing by offering me that choice, and it's clever psychologically as well as less illegal to offer a silly choice that preserves someone's illusion of personal property rights, than to confiscate pocketknife keyrings and baby bottles and yogurt out of hand, but NO, I WOULD NOT rather take off my shoes and empty out my pockets and unpack my laptop and remember not to put it in the same bin as the case, after adequately stowing those items again so I can leave the security area, just so I can eat this 4 ounces of yogurt.) I said, "I can't eat it right now?" (in the presence of these witnesses and all here assembled) and she said "No, afraid not." I had a spoon and everything, I could have stood aside and gobbled it right up in probably less than thirty seconds.

I wonder what would have happened if I'd said, 'Okay, I'll go back,' but then, upon accepting the container of yogurt, I'd suddenly peeled back the top and started eating it right there by the x-ray conveyor belt. Would I have been detained, or cited, or forbidden to board a plane? Or perhaps I'd never have had that option because she would have walked the yogurt outside the security area before returning it to me, as there is protocol for this kind of thing, these scenarios with yogurt.