I recently watched the excellent, three-episode Tylenol Murders on Netflix. I had lost track or never knew many of the details. The man incarcerated for 12 years for the 7 Chicago poisonings was never found guilty of murder, only writing an extortion letter to the drug’s manufacturers. Similarly, a suspect in the later Westchester poisoning could never be found guilty of more than an unpleasant demeanor and a copy of the Anarchist’s Cookbook. Johnson & Johnson, the parent company of Tylenol, called for a recall of 250 million pills. President Reagan gave the CEO a Medal of Freedom for his commitment to public safety.
Years later, the daughter of the Westchester poisoning victim, who, at 8 years old, watched her mother die in front of her, has become an obsessive private investigator. The final report from the recall said there were 75 tainted pills in 8 bottles. This report was based on testing done within the company lab. What happened to the remaining stock of recalled pills? All destroyed to reassure public safety, meaning all remaining evidence was destroyed. The 8 recorded deaths involved people between the ages of 12 and 35, all in otherwise perfect health. She raises the question of whether there were other deaths of people, aged, disease compromised, in accidents after seizing, who might also have been victims of the drug; but, their deaths attributed to something else.
When I saw the timeline, the first death occurred on September 29, 1982, two days before my 30th birthday. I note this because most of us who remember this case first hand are now senior citizens who every day deal with the aftermath—products SEALED FOR YOUR PROTECTION.
There are constant reminders of our aging every day: technology that constantly demands we learn new skills and buy new devices to do something simple like banking or ordering groceries; retread tv shows and bad music; reading glasses stashed all over the house for the increasingly small print on cereal boxes, pill bottles, and junk mail that looks important. But the most ubiquitous demon is packaging. They say hand grip is a determiner of aging well. If that’s the case, the whole damn country is on the scenic route to senility.
Ever try to open a new bottle of cough syrup in the middle of the night to quell a raging hack? Open the glued box, take out the bottle, then get up to look for a pair of scissors or paring knife to loosen the plastic collar. I don’t know if there are ER stats on how many people have stabbed themselves during this step. Now hope you have enough strength to press down while turning. Mouthwash is the same, sans the outer box, but you’ve still got the collar, and now there are two places to push in while turning. Guess how worried most people are about resealing for their protection? Most just never close the bottle completely because it’s a pain to deal with every day. Ditto for vitamins and laundry detergent pods. Tip: never pick up a bottle in an old person’s home by the lid because it won’t actually be on tight. For a while easy open OTC pain killers were labeled arthritis cap. I haven’t seen those for a while, probably because all those young whippersnappers with a strong grip wanted less hassle opening lids too.
The caps on actual prescription bottles are even more perplexing. Sure, you can ask for a regular lid if you remember, but the de facto packaging is childproof (probably not) and senior resistant (definitely). You do get used to dealing with the bottles from your regular pharmacy, but all pharmacies are slightly different. Once, when I was being discharged from the hospital, I utilized their pharmacy. No lie, I had to resort to a pair of channel lock pliers and a church key can opener to access the contents at home.
And it isn’t just the medicine cabinet that’s impacted. It’s every product imaginable. You can’t feed yourself without grappling with the sealant conspiracy. A former student who was majoring in engineering pointed out to me that even something as simple as a potato chip can was engineered. As with some monstrous architecture, packaging produces a lot of style over substance. Try opening a simple chip bag without ripping the entire bag asunder. Opening resealable bags can never be accomplished with the tear here notch, and cutting the bag never lets you hit that magical zone that actually lets you pull the bag open on the first try.
Pull top cans are supposed to be more convenient. True, they aren’t supposed to require any more tools. But, you ask anyone with arthritis if, after they slip a butter knife under the ring to start the process, they don’t struggle to pull the lid hard enough to actually open the can. Jars are their own issues. There are any number of gadgets to assist with this. I personally have a long-handled vise that lets me use my body weight to eventually wrench the jar open. And yes, jars too usually have plastic collars or inner seals.
Even foil sealed coffee cans require tools. The pull tab never gives you enough leverage pull the foil off in one piece. Instead, you grab a paring knife, stab a hole in the foil and start pulling from the center. True, this is easier than the old Maxwell key opener. (An ancient artifact similar to dial phones and cursive writing.) Having to go back to that could make me give up caffeine—or go raging through the streets to the nearest overpriced coffee shop. I realized this when I recently had a hankering for a reuben. I finally had to take needle nose pliers and tin snips to the corned beef can, making me vow all future reubens would be handed to me through Arby’s drive-thru window.
So, as our bodies get weaker, we are once again demoted to being the preschooler who can’t open his milk carton or fruit cup, only there is no exhausted lunch monitor to help us. Feeding and medicating yourself shouldn’t have to require a day laborer’s toolkit.
I realize that the kind of packaging I grew up with could encourage tampering and theft, but we’ve gone to extremes. With the amount of electronic surveillance in even the smallest mom and pop pharmacy, no one is going to hang around the aisles long enough to tamper with pills or risk setting off the alarms taking pills home to tamper. Really, why would a criminal today bother with something as painstaking as pill tampering when he can apparently buy an automatic weapon and blow away a dozen innocent souls in a classroom, a movie theater, a music festival, a place of worship? You know, the kinds of places people go for the same reason they buy Tylenol—to ease the pain and feel better.
I guess I wouldn’t feel so bad if I really believed the fine folks in packaging were actually looking out for my well being instead of engaging in an Olympic competition of CYA. Sealed for my protection? I think not.
But what do I know? I’m just a spinster with cats.