Chicago to ban little baggies

(Jeff puts down the drumsticks and puts on his Crusader Against Stupidity hat...)

Life is a funny thing. Every time you think that you've seen the absolute stupidest, most asinine thing ever, someone, inevitably a politician, comes along and ups the ante.

Last night, the City Council in Chicago put a ban on small, self sealing baggies. You know, the kind that your extra buttons come in when you buy a new shirt or whatever. The rationale is that drug dealers use these little bags to package small amounts of drugs for sale in the $10-20 range.

The move bans baggies that measure less than 2 inches by 2 inches, which really is brilliant because IT'S NOT LIKE THE DRUG DEALERS WILL THINK TO USE BIGGER BAGS INSTEAD.

What in the frickin' heck are these people thinking. Oh yes, I'm sure the margins on that $10 bag of crack are so tight that the move to using a sandwich bag that costs $0.005 instead of the mini self sealing bags that cost $0.003 is really going to put the squeeze on these drug dealers.

Heck, half of them might be out of business within a month.

Please.

And all the businesses that legitimately use these bags are going to be hosed because, even though they don't have "intent to misuse" them (or whatever the councilmen said), it's not like it's worth the business risk of having some kind of issue. I know for sure that homebrew stores use these things for hop pellets and the like... as if the average cop is going to know that a bag of weird green hop pellets in a plastic mini bag is "legitimate use" and not some type of drug. Yeah, right.

It's sad enough that some idiot councilman even came up with this idea. It's sadder still that enough of them agreed to pass it. What's really unbelievable is that people vote these jokers into office.

Regulation of plastic baggies. Ugh. What could possibly be next? I hear terrorists have been known to use copper wire and Phillips head screws in their bombs. Maybe we should ban those too.