Popular Mom And Pop Water Purification Business Shut Down By DEA. They Are The 99%.

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Popular Mom And Pop Water Purification Business Shut Down By DEA. T...

 

Federal agents say 88-year-old Saratoga man's invention is being used by meth labs

By Sean Webby

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Posted: 11/14/2011 12:00:00 AM PST

Updated: 11/21/2011 10:26:11 PM PST

Eighty-eight-year-old retired metallurgist Bob Wallace is a self-described tinkerer, but he hardly thinks of himself as the Thomas Edison of the illegal drug world.

 

He has nothing to hide. His product is packaged by hand in a cluttered Saratoga garage. It's stored in a garden shed in the backyard. The whole operation is guarded by an aged, congenial dog named Buddy.

 

But federal and state drug enforcement agents are coming down hard on Wallace's humble homemade solution, which he concocted to help backpackers purify water.

 

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency and state regulators say druggies can use the single ingredient in his "Polar Pure" water purifier -- iodine -- to make crystal meth.

 

Wallace says federal and state agents have effectively put him out of business, because authorities won't clear the way for him to buy or sell the iodine he needs for his purification bottles. He has been rejected for a state permit by the Department of Justice and is scheduled to appeal his case before an administrative judge in Sacramento next month.

 

more

http://www.mercurynews.com/saratoga/ci_19385037

 

[Michael Rivero]

Meth labs use screwdrivers. You gonna ban screwdrivers now?

[fishychick]

The DEA says this couple's defunct business is "collateral damage" from meth. I knew meth could do nasty stuff, but I never realized it brought goons into non-meth users lives. What in biology or chemistry explains that "cause and effect" relationship?

I'm a little creeped out that they are making it hard to get iodine just when we are being spewed upon by Fukushima. People with thyroids use iodine, too.