Flash powder

When I was a teenager, if I wanted to buy some flash powder all I had to do is walk down to the camera shop and I could buy a tin across the counter. I set out the other day to get some for the Puppet Maths videos that I am shooting. My first problem is that there is no local camera shop anymore. Cameras are sold by big retail multiples, and they only sell the fast moving items where volume and profit margin combine to provide the return they need for their fancy shop fitting and expensive locations. So I turned to the internet to see if I could find any for sale there. There is actually quite a lot about flash powder on the internet, including various recipies for making it in one's own kitchen. There are even some vendors selling the stuff... apparently, but on closer inspection they do not actually have any stock for sale. A phone call to one such vendor supplied me with the answer, no one supplies it because it cannot be transported. There are transport regulations that make it impossible to take delivery of it. Today one can only get it if one orders it in large quantities. I can understand that there should be regulations for the transport of explosives, but surely it is much safer for it to be transported in small quantities rather than large? Clearly the issue is not about safety. The only reason why it only available in large quantities is that the quantities need to be sufficient to pay for the overhead involved in managing the regulation covering the transport. Such is the society that we have engineered for ourselves today.