WillCAD

I suddenly had a flashback to 1993.

I was working part-time in a local grocery store as a bagger, cashier, lot boy. Even in 1993, it was illegal to smoke inside a grocery store in Maryland, and whenever I was working the lot, if I saw someone try to enter the store while smoking I'd point out that it was illegal. Most people were perfectly okay with it and extinguished their material in an ash can next to the entrance.

One day while on my break in the upstairs break room, where smoking was, regrettably, still permitted, a fellow employee who was a smoker asked me, "Are you telling people they can't smoke?"

"Yeah. Why?"

"You can't do that."

"Why not?"

"You got no right to tell people they can't smoke."

"It's against the law to smoke in a grocery store in Maryland. Says so right on the front door of this store. All I'm doing is telling people that it's against the law."

"I don't believe you!"

"It's printed right on the front door. Go down there and read it yourself."

I never heard from her again. But your hypothetical gave me a sudden image of a TSO opening your script bottle, seeing q-tips inside, and telling you, "You can't do that! You can't put anything in a prescription bottle except the prescription!"

"Really? 'Cause I just did. See, they fit perfectly."

And further arguments by the doctor-slash-lawyer masquerading as a minimum-wage luggage sniffer would ensue.