Cold Medicine
Cold Medicine
[Cueball is standing in a drug store, with a drug in his hand he has taken from the shelf he is standing next to. The shelf is labeled.] Cueball: *Sniffle* Label: Cold & Flu
[Cueball is standing alone, examining some medicine he is holding up, while having some other medicine in the other hand.] Cueball: *Cough* Cueball: *Sniff*
[Cueball continues examining more medicine. Looking down on one in his hand, having another in the other hand and there are also three packages at his feet.] Cueball: Ughhh...
[Cueball is at the labeled counter in the drug store with computer etc. Ponytail is behind the counter.] Counter label: Sale Cueball: Just gimme one of every kind of cold medicine you need ID to buy. Ponytail: You'll go on the watchlist for— Cueball: Don't care.

In this comic Cueball is probably representing Randall who seems to have been suffering from a long lasting cold that he just can't get rid of. Two weeks before this comic Randall posted another comic about how a cold works: 1612: Colds . This is also supported by the way the title text is phrased to make it sound like something Randall writes, disconnected with the action in the comic (see below).
In the comic Cueball is evidently suffering from a cold and he is searching the shelves labeled cold and Flu at a pharmacy for any kind of cold medicine (hence the title), to alleviate his symptoms. Note that this is all he can hope for, as there are still no cure that really helps getting rid of the cold any faster. All medication can do is help relieving the symptoms until the body's own immune system takes care of the relatively harmless cold virus.
After looking at several different options Cueball is clearly unsatisfied with what he finds. Either he doesn't feel that any of the unmonitored drugs available on the serve-yourself-shelf is useful, or he is actually too sick to properly ascertain which medicine he needs. In the end he approaches the counter and asks the pharmacist ( Ponytail ) to give him one of every kind of cold medicine which requires an ID to purchase. Two years later Randall finds a solution for Cueball's problem with a new cold medicine with only active ingredients, including among other all the active ingredients from all the cold medicines on the market, see 1896: Active Ingredients Only .
Back in the comic, Ponytail tries to warn Cueball of another danger, that by simply purchasing so much cold medicine he would end up on a law enforcement watchlist, presumably one of the government agencies ( DEA , FBI , CIA etc.) But she never gets to finish her sentence because Cueball is beyond caring and tells her this.
In the USA, cold medicines containing pseudoephedrine are kept behind the counter and IDs purchasing them are monitored, because pseudoephedrine can be used to make the scheduled drug methamphetamine or meth (a more hydrophobic - and thus potent - version of amphetamine ). However, it is also an extremely effective decongestant (a pharmaceutical drug that is used to relieve nasal congestion /plugged nose), much more so than the common substitutes such as phenylephrine and oxymetazoline which have no clinically proven decongestant effect.
This could be one reason why Cueball just requests all kinds of cold medicines of amongst other this type; he does not appear to care what exactly he is purchasing, believing that his one criterion will provide him medicine powerful enough for his illness. It may also be that he is just too sick to care or realize that this will arouse suspicion of him being a drug dealer, or to recognize the need to select only one medication of these type.
This could be a reference to the medicine with the brand name Sudafed , sold as an over the counter decongestants with pseudoephedrine as the active ingredient. Now the manufacturer also sells a different type of medicine with the same brand name without pseudoephedrine, but with phenylephrine, which seems to be much less effective. If you buy this off the shelf (where it can be sold because it does not contain methamphetamine precursors) then you could easily get home with the once effective Sudafed, only to realize later that it does not alleviate any symptoms. This could offer another explanation for Cueball's request and outburst in the final panel.
The title text seems to be Randall's own comment on how badly he is affected by his cold. He thus, humorously, suggests that he is now ready to purchase illegal drugs (this would then be meth ) in order to turn it back into a cold medicine (i.e. pseudoephedrine). This would not be safe to do, but may be a reference to this spoof paper: A Simple and Convenient Synthesis of Pseudoephedrine From N-Methylamphetamine , a take on the long-going joke about the recent difficulty in obtaining pseudoephedrine, i.e. it is now easier to get your hands on the illegal drug made from it.
It is a humorous exaggeration of how far Randall is willing to go to get the best cold medicine, and the potency of the drugs needed to treat his apparently debilitating illness. There are many illegal drugs that when first synthesized were planned to be used as a medical drug, but then later abused by drug addicts, but given the subject of the comic, the title text obviously refers to meth.
Randall continued in the medical world with the next comic: 1619: Watson Medical Algorithm .
[Cueball is standing in a drug store, with a drug in his hand he has taken from the shelf he is standing next to. The shelf is labeled.] Cueball: *Sniffle* Label: Cold & Flu
[Cueball is standing alone, examining some medicine he is holding up, while having some other medicine in the other hand.] Cueball: *Cough* Cueball: *Sniff*
[Cueball continues examining more medicine. Looking down on one in his hand, having another in the other hand and there are also three packages at his feet.] Cueball: Ughhh...
[Cueball is at the labeled counter in the drug store with computer etc. Ponytail is behind the counter.] Counter label: Sale Cueball: Just gimme one of every kind of cold medicine you need ID to buy. Ponytail: You'll go on the watchlist for— Cueball: Don't care.
