DHS Suggests a REAL ID Could be Necessary for Medicine
By Ryan Singel January 16, 2008 | 4:47:12

A top homeland security policy maker suggests that the recently released mandates for a de-facto national I.D. card could help stop meth labs, if the government required that pharmacy's demand that cold medicine buyers show their REAL ID.

Currently individuals who want to buy over-the-counter decongestants containing pseudo-ephedrine have to show I.D. to a pharmacy clerk, sign a log sheet and are limited in the amount they can purchase. The rules -- pushed heavily by California Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, are intended to make it harder for meth labs to get pseudo-ephedrine to cook into full-blown methamphetamines. They were made law in the 2006 re-authorization of the Patriot Act.

Stewart Baker, the assistant director for policy at Homeland Security and a longtime needler of privacy groups, suggested on Wednesday that the federal law could be tweaked to require controversial REAL ID identification cards, according to News.com. Federal rules -- such as those requiring identification to enter federal buildings or to board a plane without being patted down -- are the hammer in the government's efforts to make recalictrant states comply with the government's rules for standardizing driver's licenses.

The Cato Institutes's Jim Harper interprets Baker's statement to mean a REAL ID would be necessary for any prescription. I don't see that in the report on Baker's remark, but certainly the F in FDA stands for Federal. The feds probably could do this, but from a health standpoint it would be a nightmare. No REAL ID, no birth control, no antibiotics, no insulin. How many dead Americans are these rules going to be worth?

Many states have balked at the expensive REAL ID proposal and have said they won't participate.

Homeland Security is already set to test those state's resolve and is threatening to not let any citizen of those states to use their state-issued I.D.'s to board planes come May.

If that holds, expect that Hartsfield-Atlanta airport will be filled with angry travelers, who not only can't get where they are going with enduring painfully long lines. The sick ones among them won't even get to stop their sniffles, either, if what the irascible Baker suggests actually comes to pass.