No Sudafed for You

According to this article in Willamette Week, a Portland, Oregon weekly, Illinoisans (and many other Americans) are now restricted from buying products containing pseudoephedrine--an ingredient of homemade methamphetamines--based almost entirely on false pretenses. Apparently, the main reason you have to speak to a live white-coat at Walgreen's and write down your name and address in a public register before they'll ring up your Sudafed is a year-long series of willfully misleading articles that appeared throughout 2005 in Portland's Oregonian daily. Possibly aiming for a Pulitzer, the paper ignored, invented, and otherwise went right to the brink of lying with statistics to make meth use seem like a local and national epidemic. The problem is, according to the actual statistics that the Oregonian never reported...it's not. Lisa Madigan, are you out there? I have some new reading for you...