What do you do when you're allergic to everything?

I’m allergic to everything.

As the allergist performed the skin test, everything came back reactive.

“I should live in a bubble,” I joked.

The allergist wasn’t amused as he seemed to have no idea what was going on.

It first started in high school. I remember an uncontrollable hive breakout during the summer of senior year. I was sitting with friends at an IHOP drinking coffee, as my then girlfriend used ice to try and calm down the hives.

A few years later, my future-wife and I were buying Halloween decorations from a local farm. We picked out our pumpkins and a bale of hay. The hay, it seems, triggered the hives which would not go away until weeks later.

I visited the allergist, received the inconclusive skin test and later an inconclusive blood test. But, throughout this process, I began trying different allergy medicines until I found one that worked.

The allergy medicine that finally calmed down the hives was Zyrtec D. For sometime, I was able to purchase my allergy medicine with no problem, but advocate groups began petitioning the government to restrict the sale of Zyrtec D as a key ingredient could be used to cook Methamphetamine.?

I thought to myself, “But I’m using this allergy medicine safely, I’d never do something like this, and my usage shouldn’t be regulated because of a few bad apples.”

In 2006, the Bush Administration ultimately implemented the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act, which put limits on the quantity I could buy, required my data be held for several years in a database, and moved the product to behind the counter.

The journey of Meth use in the US isn’t clear cut, as the years after the CMEA was implemented saw a decline in Meth usage, but the Fentanyl crisis has brought with it an increase in Meth use, as Meth is now frequently laced with Fentanyl, an addictive and highly dangerous chemical.

What needed to happen to combat the Meth crisis was a two-pronged approach, tighter regulations on the same compounds used to make Meth and increased mental health and addiction services for those impacted by the drug crisis.

It was this realization that allowed me to understand that while I wasn’t the intended target of the regulation, it was in the interest of the greater good to make things more challenging for those that destroy others’ lives to do so, even if it meant it would now be an inconvenience for me in obtaining my medicine.

Initially I had felt as though my rights had been trampled upon, but I realized as a law-abiding user of Zyrtec D, my access to the medication didn’t change drastically. I didn’t need a high quantity package. I ultimately didn’t even need something as powerful as Zyrtec D.

Regulations work, but as apparent with the increase in Meth use during the Fentanyl crisis, we also need support services for those at risk of substance abuse.

This scenario, while very real to me, has played out in history a few times. Think of the uproar when seatbelt use became mandatory. Again, people felt as though their rights had been trampled on. Ultimately, seatbelts have saved countless lives that would have otherwise been lost. But combined with the seatbelt law, has been a very visible push to ensure anyone in a car understands the risk factors of not buckling up.

“Click it or ticket,” might be one of the best taglines to support a regulation ever.

Regulations work, but in tandem with support services work exponentially better. It is not an either or scenario, but an “and.”

As we reflect on another mass shooting, the conversation has already shifted towards the narrative that regulations don’t work. If a mass shooting can occur in Illinois, then clearly gun regulations don’t work.

They aren’t enough, but they help.

Quite clearly you can see the impact gun regulations have on death rates via firearm, by viewing the CDC’s data through their Wonder platform.

Mississippi leads the US with 28.6 deaths per 100,000 and has one of the more lenient gun laws in the country.??Then Louisiana, Wyoming, Missouri.

It takes a while to get to Illinois, at 14.4.

This is the question though, if we can stand together and make it more challenging for drug abusers to make Methamphetamine, or to protect lives with seatbelts, why can’t we do the same for guns?

My allergy medicine journey is a pretty innocuous comparison, but the fact remains, without regulating Pseudoephedrine in allergy and cold medicines, many more people would have died.?Without mandating seatbelt use, many more people would have died. When do we say, enough is enough and enact real change?