Living on the edge of three states and two countries makes you appreciate the arbitrary vagaries of legislative jurisdictions.
In Texas, you can’t buy liquor on Sunday, but if you live in El Paso you can cruise over to the Side Door Liquor store or Billy Crews and scratch your itch.
In January, recreational marijuana will be legal in New Mexico. They say that Mexico is legalizing marijuana, but the Mexican legal system is byzantine, so we’ll see what happens. Texas still clings to a strict fundamentalist interpretation of what is okay for your neighbor to do.
Texas is about to legalize the unlicensed carrying of firearms. In New Mexico, you can wear your handgun on your hip without a license, but if you want to tuck it under your dinner jacket, you need a permit.
“Let me go home and get my gun.”
Don’t try carrying a piece in Mexico. In Mexico, you can keep a .38 handgun and a .22 rifle in your house, which might be handy in a domestic dispute, but useless if you’re robbed on the street.
And it’s not like people in Mexico don’t have guns. The outlaws are still strapped. And if you’re affiliated in Mexico, jail’s not too bad. At least, not as bad as if you’re not affiliated.
Another difference between Mexico and the U.S. is regulation of the pharmaceutical industry. Thirty years ago you could get practically anything you wanted at a Mexican pharmacy. I remember buying Bactrin, a combination antibiotic used for the treatment of bacterial infections that also seemed to work well for food poisoning, from a pharmacy in Creel. The girl behind the counter was probably 14 years old. She acted like I knew what I was talking about, and brought me a box.
Antibiotics were one of the first things that the pharmaceutical regulators in Mexico started controlling. No one wants antibiotic resistant diseases running rampant, and the indiscriminate use of antibiotics fosters that.
Then, they took the doctors out of the pharmacies. At least in Juarez. Before, if you wanted Valiums, or diet pills, the pharmacist would say Oh, you need a prescription for that, and then just slide down the counter to his doctor’s office, and write you a scrip.
These days you can’t do that in Juarez.
But a couple of years ago I was in Rosarito, and the pharmacies had signs in their windows advertising Valiums, so maybe you can still get them there.
But here’s the latest, from Politico.com:
In just 12 months, an affordable anti-parasitic has made its way from a humble head-lice treatment to being touted as a “miracle cure” for coronavirus — getting an audience before the U.S. Senate and making its way into official government guidelines.
Veterinarians have seen a rush on doses of ivermectin meant for large animals as people battle to get hold of doses meant for humans, while black markets cash in and a fervent media campaign pushes inconclusive research.
The Czech Republic now allows its off-label use, while Slovakia imports tens of thousands of doses. Promising research on the drug’s potential to treat and prevent coronavirus, combined with desperation over rising case numbers and deaths and a tidal wave of disinformation, has led to use of the drug skyrocketing in Central and Eastern Europe, as well as Latin America and South Africa.
. . .
The world’s leading medicines regulators have consistently warned against its use for coronavirus. Last week, the European Medicines Agency stated that the evidence doesn’t support its use for coronavirus outside of clinical trials, and warned that toxicity at high doses “cannot be excluded.” The U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned on March 5 that overdosing on the drug could even lead to death, noting multiple reports of patients being hospitalized after self-medicating.
The word on the street is that some doctors in El Paso are taking Invermectin prophylactically, you know, so they won’t get pregnant catch Covid.
You can’t get Ivermectin in Juarez, they tell me, but you can in Cd. Chihuahua.
I don’t know. If you can’t trust the FDA, who can you trust?
I wouldn’t claim that the FDA is in bed with Big Pharma. But like that article in Politico.com says, faith in our institutions is at an all time low. And no American capitalists are giving away the patents on a those Covid vaccines.
The El Chuqueño medical consultant maintains that a dose that effectively inhibits the Covid virus far exceeds the recommended dose for humans, and may be lethal. He says that if you want to avoid the virus, get the vaccine.
I got the first Moderna dose, and I wanted to sell all my guns and vote Democrat in the midterms.
I wouldn’t claim that the FDA isn’t in bed with Big Pharma.
But if you take the Ivermectin, at least you won’t have worms.