Mike and I have been discussing issues like this on and off for ages now. It started when we popped into a small local pet store here in northern Michigan that was selling 3 baby burms...two albino's, one normal...unsexed as far as I know. Nice cute little babies that have a large potential for growth and special needs for housing, husbandry and handling.
I guess what bothers us most is that pet store doesn't have a reptile specialist per se. There are no local requirements that we are aware of to monitor pet stores or require anything from them. There is now only one baby burm left and we wonder just how much the two purchasers were told about a burmese and it's potential down the road.
I don't know what the answer is as far as the pet store part of this equation. I hope these burms went to responsible, experienced snake owners but since there is nothing that even remotely encourages or requires that....who knows.
Wierd thing here, when I tried to look up laws surrounding ownership of exotics, etc. all I found was tons of information on wolf dogs. Odd I don't see a lot of those for sale LOL but somebody sure has a fly up their nose over this apparently if you go by the page upon page of what is and isn't a wolf dog and how it must be housed, etc., etc.
~~Jo~~