I guess you could call this a “how times have changed” moment. I remember when I was a little kid – and I mean little, like five years old or so – using a Vicks decongestant inhaler. My mom (or maybe it was my grandmother) just gave me this thing to carry around in my pocket when I had a stuffy nose, to use whenever I felt like I needed it. (Ever wonder how any of us survived to spawn today’s more “enlightened” generation? No? Me neither.) I haven’t seen one of these things in a store in decades but whenever I get a stuffy nose I think how nice it would be to have one instead of taking drugs that make you drowsy and raise your blood pressure or “vapor” cough drops that leave a bad taste in your mouth.

You see, I was assuming that these things just had something like mentholatum inside. Not so. They do contain menthol and camphor but the active ingredient is Levmetamfetamine so I had to look that up and found that Vicks is fudging a bit on the name. It’s actually Levomethamphetamine. Yikes! Now I know why they’re hard to find. But why don’t they make something like what I was originally thinking this thing was – no scary drugs, just nice vapory menthol and camphor for a quick, though temporary, clear-up? Seriously. How can they not do something that obvious?