Good grief. Liberalism has certainly taken over a lot of peoples' thinking. Or, I guess, what you're actually espousing is anarchy.
Sure, there are many instances of a higher moral duty trumping a law (e.g., speeding to a hospital) but this is usually thought of as life-or-death cases or deeply important moral and philosophical issues (adhering to a state religion, not being gay, having more than one candidate in an election) rather than interference with peoples' hobbies. Traditional morality focused quite a lot on adhering to the dictates of society ("render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's", etc.). I don't think that a law banning pseudoephedrine is really the same moral issue as laws banning women from driving. I do think that people deciding that any law they find inconvenient is trumped by their high personal morals is very suspect.
What inconsistency between groups? Are you referring to US vs Mexico (and Indonesia, among others)? Mexico doesn't ban just mestizos, women, Jews, bald people, or foreigners from having pseudoephedrine. The law applies equally to everyone within the borders. Unless you include as a "group" "people outside the jurisdiction", it applies completely consistently among groups.
Are you REALLY saying that we in the US don't get to make and enforce rules that conflict with what tourists are used to at home? Or that, for example, Australia should have to let Americans tote their pistols around the Outback (you'll certainly find plenty of Americans who'll insist Australia would be safer for it, arguably representing a "higher level of morality")? If laws are immorally inconsistent simply because they're different in different countries, the solotion to that is a single world government with global laws. As great an idea as that may be, there are many who would burn down the world before submitting to that.
Or, to get back to medication examples: every single kid born with phocomelia to a mother who took thalidomide in the US is a victim of someone's decision to circumvent the US ban on that drug, which was widely scorned as ridiculous in countries that had approved it. I think that decision has been vindicated over time, but are you saying that there's a "higher level of morality" (presumably based on how much morning sickness sucks) that justified circumvention of our ban?
Sure they do! Pseudoephedrine is sufficiently arrhythmogenic to cause death occasionally, but it's also a pressor and not everyone needs their blood pressure raised. In a world population of nearly 8 billion that includes children who get their hands on it, people with weird allergies and metabolisms, and people who use it for all sorts of things including to get high, I'm certain it causes at least 365 deaths per year. That's still safer than chest X-rays, having a cat in the house, or even eating.
