Buying Lye
Owing to some home repairs I had to visit the local Lowe’s hardware store twice today. The first time I bought a caulk gun, some tubes of caulk, a caulk-removal tool and a caulk-smoothing tool; the second time I bought a second caulk gun (a long, sad and ultimately irrelevant story) and a third tube of caulk—and a bottle of lye crystals.
Now, the only thing I added my second trip was the bottle of lye. I was asked for my phone number and (rather unthinkingly) I gave it. But immediately afterwards it occurred to me: I hadn’t been asked for my phone number earlier. This wasn’t some scheme by Lowe’s to get my customer details (perhaps to call me with free offers later on). Were that the case the earlier, priicer purchase would have resulted in the same question. No, this was in response to my purchase of lye.
You see, lye is a key ingredient in soap-making: a quantity of lye is mixed with water and the caustic solution is mixed in with oils and fats (which are themselves faintly acidic); the resulting chemical reaction (called saponification) produces a salt we know as soap. But lye’s not just used to make soap; it’s used to clear drains, clean stainless steel and more. Being a strong base, it’s also used to manipulate pH at various points in chemical syntheses (much like adding lemon juice to a recipe using baking soda), including one particular synthesis: that of methamphetamine. It can also be used in the production of gamma-hydroxybutyric acid.
This shouldn’t be a big deal. Water, for example, is used in the production of most if not all illegal substances; like sodium hydroxide (lye) it has legitimate and illegitimate uses; unlike lye, purchasers of water are not required to provide phone numbers. But apparently someone has determined that the purchase of a substance with numerous legitimate uses is to be recorded.
I don’t use any illegal drugs at all–they’re not my thing. I ingest alcohol, nicotine and caffeine in various liquid (mmm…beer!), solid (mmm…chocolate-covered coffee beans!) and aromatic (mmm…pipes!) forms. I have never made methamphetamine or GHB in my life, nor do I have any real desire to do so. I buy lye first of all to make soap; secondly to clean out beer kegs; thirdly to clear out clogged drains. And now my phone number (and name, and address) is in some jack-booted thug’s database, simply because I prefer to do for myself rather than hire others to do for me.
Certainly, I could buy soap at the supermarket. Of course, I could purchase a commercial cleansing solution. Definitely, I could acquire a proprietary drain-clearing solution. If we all did that, the one might hazard a guess that most buyers of lye are illegitimate. Of course, that soap we’d buy would be full of toxic substances; that cleaning solution might have who-knows-what nasties in it; that drain-unclogger might have some vicious things in it.
But who cares? It doesn’t matter how badly we treat our environment, our property or ourselves, as long as we keep people from living as free citizens in a free country. I mean, next thing you know people are going to start sewing their own clothes and planting their own food, and then where will we be?
