https://gizmodo.com/report-many-over-the-counter-decongestan...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisalvo/2015/10/26/the-pop...
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2089555-breaking-bad-sn...
Answer: the taste
Seriously, my late father _loved_ that joke, as do I.
EDIT: Looks like it does work for this! Nice!
Haha, I am of course kidding, the meth trade is fuelling gang violence harder than ever, and it now really sucks if you get heavily congested sinuses.
When I'm travelling via Australia I try to buy as much pseudoephedrine containing medicines as I think I can bring back to NZ without looking like a smuggler, and then ration them out to family members very begrudgingly.
Meanwhile, methamphetamine is coming into the country in large quantities in shipping containers (along with illegal firearms). Banning pseudoephedrine was totally worth it...
And now something similar is occurring with cough suppressants, the ones that contained dextromethorphan, i.e., the ones that worked, turns out some people were abusing them recreationally, (DXM is a disassociative in high enough doses), so now that's gone, and we're left with pholcodine, which I find far less effective, but that too is looking likely to be banned, because apparently that's abusable too.
I'm not sure our regulators have the balance right.
It works so well (and the PE version of everything is so useless), it must be really crap not to be able to get any!
Then the whole Sackler / Oxycontin thing came to light. And I saw (well, second hand) a normal person get hooked on pain meds after back surgery, thanks to those assholes. And they're not in prison.
That's when I concluded that we lack the collective will to take the necessary steps to fully stop the trade of addictive drugs.
However, our drug war is causing Mexico to descend in to anarchy and people are dying by the thousands, or living in total fear of cartels that we trained in the School of the Americas.
Thus, I conclude we have to decriminalize and treat our addicts. Enforcement is not working. If we had a sane drug policy 30-40 years ago, Mexico might be a healthy vibrant trading partner.
> drug abuse being primarily being a function of the existence or lack of interpersonal involvement and responsibilities that would preclude spending time and money on them
AFAIK there have always been addicts in every culture. Alcohol, various drugs, and strongly self destructive behaviors are not recent additions to the human experience. But I don't know any if the numbers or the research on this root cause you mention.
Surely you would agree that there the proportion of addicts varies by culture and society, that the US for example has a much higher proportion than many poorer nations? I don't know about the first comment's claim that lack of interpersonal relationship is the root cause, but a strong social component looks obvious to me.
Poorer nations, those folks tend to die pretty fast though.
https://www.naturalhigh.org/icelands-radical-transformation-...
I don't know if I'd go as far as to say it's the fundamental problem, but definitely a major factor.
> AFAIK there have always been addicts in every culture
Alcohol addicts are a totally different thing compared to drug addicts. You can die as a result of alcohol, but there's nothing like fentanyl in the alcohol world (I'm talking about the scale of the disaster, I know about the few alcohol intoxications here and there).
Do you have any links to social programs that have successfully dealt with meth addiction?
Can't say I have seen any locally (New Zealand) and we are a country more likely to see such programs?
1) The implication of my statement wasn't that social programs would solve the problem single-handedly, but that they're more effective than enhanced law enforcement spending.
2) This would seem to be, at the very least, supported by the people who advocated for treating the (mostly white and middle-class) victims of the opioid epidemic in the US as suffering from a medical rather than criminal affliction.
What do police have to do with the effectiveness of social programs? A fundamentally ineffective social program will be just about as ineffective no matter how much funding it gets - because the problem they are approaching isn't one that they can solve.
Correct - ironically, as you're describing most law enforcement agencies. The money spent on police - particularly their generous overtime and pension pay, equipment outlays, and hilariously ineffectual training - could be used to fund social interventions that actually work.
Drugs can also be stolen, from homes, and from pharmacies, and from ambulances.
There are way more vectors than people care to ponder. If you've ever had an addict in your life, you're forced to.
If the mountain will not go to...
Also, do not underestimate the capabilities of a meth user when they get fixated on something.
Teachers push any kid that can’t sit still while being bored for hours to be taken to the doctor for adhd, where they are quickly prescribed amphetamine salts. What do you think they will hit the streets for if their addy script ever gets cut off, or, there’s a shortage of supply? (happened recently). Methamphetamine.
Many people use small doses of meth the same way they would take a daily dose of adderall.
You can actually be prescribed literally methamphetamine. Not amphetamine, methamphetamine. It’s rare, but it exists.
https://dynomight.net/p2p-meth/ "The main thing about P2P meth is that there's so much of it"
– I can't see how Phenylacetone can have chirality
– I don't understand how any enantiomer of P2P (if one exists, see above) can be selected for specifically via a chemical reaction, especially here with tartaric acid, which is a chiral molecule itself, so surely you would need a specific enantiomer of tartaric acid to start with?
I'm sure these are basic questions, I'm just a dabbler. Any links welcome, no problem if this is out of place for HN.TIA
> – I don't understand how any enantiomer of P2P (if one exists, see above) can be selected for specifically via a chemical reaction
You just react P2P and get a racemic mix of L- and D- enantiomers of meth. Then you react it with tartaric acid, which will preferentially react with the "right" meth.
> tartaric acid, which is a chiral molecule itself
Ah, I see the confusion. Tartaric acid derived from biological sources consists of just one enantiomer, that's why you can use it to do chiral resolution.
Another case of needless regulation driving outsourcing, and putting our small manufacturing business out of work.
Weren't most pseudoephedrine-to-meth operations in rural areas or otherwise situated away from the general public to avoid detection?
Plenty of these stories documented either way: https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/pittsburgh/news/police-erie-boy-...
But any "benefit" of the likes of Al Capone ended with prohibition, i.e. the thing forcing the alternatives to be methanol poisoning or mob hits.
And you wouldn't need to check ID to rate limit cold medicine if you would just check ID to rate limit what people make out of it.
Ask yourself why that isn't happening?
Actually, coming from the UK I was surprised I had to go through this, but now I realise I was previously buying the ineffective stuff, I was also surprised by the very, very mild buzz the swiss stuff gave me.
> Indeed. I've known that phenylepherine is worthless for a long while, and just make it a point to buy a pack of the real stuff every 6 months or so, so that I always have it on hand when I need it. In my state, it's controlled - you have to get it from a pharmacist (though you can do so without a prescription) - they take your driver's license and don't allow you to purchase it too often.
Sure, I could buy 6 boxes at a time. I just don't. There's not really any good reason to min-max my pseuodephedrine acquisition.
Or god forbid, you run out at work and forgot the CVS takes a siesta nationwide at 1:30.
I usually buy boxes of 48x 30mg, but even then I'd have to stash 10 boxes for it to be illegal.
Im not saying it’s unreasonable, just that the monthly limit is probably higher than he realized and he doesnt need to stockpile them.
Synthesizing it from widely-available and affordable street drugs, I assume.
https://improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume19/v19i3/Pse...
From there, it's not too far of a stretch to imagine the government assigning someone to review the list and to expend additional investigative resources into merely "suspicious" cases. Plenty of good tragedies start this way.
If the government has an interest in preventing drug manufacture then this is the absolute worst way to go about prosecuting that agenda. It harms the wrong people and it offers no impediment to actual producers.
The information cannot possibly be useful, it may become a liability, and I didn't ask to be protected from myself.
Otherwise, what right is it of the government to enact this rate limit? What interest are they protecting? How is the rate limit decided? What can I do if I disagree with the rate limit? Why is a private business being burdened with the governments agenda here?
I get where you're coming from, it _is_ a /small/ thing, but the implications immediately become onerous if you think about their meaning inside of a "free" country.
This isn't the primary concern anyways, the point was, in order to implement this seemingly simple action, many liberties have to be sacrificed and the boundary between innocent and criminal and government and private business become significantly marred.
Perhaps those sacrifices are immaterial to most lives and could be ignored without consequence, but the originalist in me says this is folly, and as I've shown it's easy to think of the dangers that some innocent people might endure as a result. Worse, comparing these dangers to the outcomes of the system itself, the whole endeavor seems to have negative value.
Finally, as we've seen in history many times, now that this electronic logbook exists, it's use will naturally continue to expand until the government has secured for itself the right to view nearly every single "questionable" purchase you make at a pharmacy.
It's an entirely unaccountable act from the government. I'm not sure why anyone would expend effort minimizing it.
This particular "logbook" has existed for almost 2 decades now, and its scope hasn't creeped from there, so your second argument is pretty easy to shoot down.
I think the evidence pretty strongly suggests that this policy, which was put in place to create a rate limit on the purchase of a chemical that isn't so much a precursor to methamphetamine as it is a slightly tweaked version of methamphetamine, is in fact simply used to create a rate limit.
It would be interesting to know if the people concerned about the need to show an ID to vote share that concern about the need to show an ID for access to medicine.
> This particular "logbook" has existed for almost 2 decades now, and its scope hasn't creeped from there, so your second argument is pretty easy to shoot down.
The policy has proved ineffective at curtailing the availability of methamphetamine while inconveniencing honest people. That's not something the public is clamoring for more of.
But it never really was. It came about to begin with as part of the Patriot Act. The lack of expansion is unsurprising given the lack of any 9/11-style crisis to use as an excuse in the intervening two decades. The test is when the next one comes.
One of the failings of the existing style of government is that the "passage by both houses of Congress and signed by the President" system used to pass legislation is the same system required to repeal it, which rightfully makes it harder to pass bad laws, but wrongfully makes it harder to repeal them. And then they get passed during a crisis and inconveniently stick.
It's clearly because you can make methamphetamine out of it. But you can also make methamphetamine out of other things which limiting access to cold medicine demonstrably hasn't prevented.
But the justification is not the same. People were going to the drug store for cough drops and unintentionally ending up addicted to opioids. Nobody was going to the drug store for a decongestant and accidentally making meth out of it, and the number of people getting addicted to pseudoephedrine itself was neither large enough to justify the change, nor its explicitly stated rationale. Nor an effective means to bring it about if the claim that showing an ID isn't a burden is to be believed because it would have no effect on the small minority of people who might go to the pharmacy for a stuffy nose and thereby become dependent on pseudoephedrine, since they would still get it.
Meanwhile the stated rational of limiting availability of methamphetamine hasn't gone well either.
This before we even mention that the OTC replacement, phenylephrine, is not only ineffective, it's a more dangerous drug than pseudoephedrine from a cardiovascular perspective and the switch has plausibly killed some people.
Do you? You have to show an insurance card to file a claim, but I imagine there is a lot of overlap between the people without ID and the people without insurance. And there appear to be free clinics that don't require ID, implying that it isn't required by law.
The alternative is you don't buy any Sudafed in the first place. So you've basically told yourself "no" anyway.
I realize you dislike the government logging your purchases, but you haven't answered GP's question about why you dislike it.
You effectively are in many cases, just as predicted by most when these laws were put into place.
First, it became far less of a relatively benign "after the fact" logbook as it was when first implemented. It is now networked and real-time. Many chain stores implement their own interpretation of what they feel a rate limit should be. This tends to err drastically on the side of conservative, and might look back much further than you assume.
Second, it's added risk - many independents simply don't want to bother with such a risk, and thus don't bother stocking it. It also adds handling costs.
And third and most importantly - it completely and irrevocably ruined the supply chain. It is now legitimately difficult to find it in stock reliably - and if you run out of it at 2am, it's no longer just a minor inconvenience to run to literally any convenience store.
Most stores simply no longer carry it, and only a handful of 24 hour pharmacy options exist compared to 20 years ago. Those pharmacies also have consistent supply issues, so you better not have strong brand or dosing preference.
Prices went up, and availability plummeted. It's out of stock roughly a third of the time I've needed to go run out to get some, and is no longer just an afterthought item to stock up on at Costco. Typically you're settling on buying the smallest boxes they make since all other sizes are out of stock, and paying even more per dose.
And it absolutely is a slippery slope. Loperamide has now met the same fate in many states, and has become multiples of the expense it used to be and a very much pain in the butt to get. No more qty 120 bottles from Costco at 2 cents a pill - entire market killed because people got used to this new norm.
It's just one more chip away at the American quality of life. Not a huge one, but one that adds expense and friction for what amounts to a questionable amount of gain.
Edit: That is all to say - it's far more than "just a rate limit". Ruining the OTC market for cold medication might be worth it, but that's more or less what happened here. It wasn't like the top 5% of buyers got scraped off the top and sent to jail and everyone else carried on per usual. The cold aisle of your local supermarket took a giant step backwards from 20 years ago in price, availability, convenience, and effectiveness. That was the cost of these creeping regulations. Some may even say the chilling effect was the entire point.
Even if someone isn't doing anything illegal, since >90% of cases end in plea deals it's good legal hygiene.
It’s literally harder for me to buy cold medicine than a gun. I hate everything about that situation.
Much of which would be covered as PII and PPI, and, in combination with info from other other data breaches can tell someone a lot about you.
I'm not saying that makes it OK to assemble into a database, and I think the point about amassing PII is well taken, but I think people are probably overestimating the value/hazardousness of this particular data set.
We can and should do the things you're suggesting, but I can't get behind the logic that we should wait til we can accomplish those things, when we can take any other more straightforward measures to mitigate "people making meth at home next door to people who don't like meth labs".
Where in my post did I say we should stop taking IDs and then wait until all of those are 100% fully accomplished before trying something else? Re-read the post - it's not there.
I'm arguing a more robust fix would be to do all of those things. That's not incompatible with keeping the current system of checking IDs until we hit some critical mass where the fixes for the more systemic issues reduce the need for checking IDs.
I don't mean to dismiss that point, it's a valid point, I'm just considering it closely.
Usually no one even looks at it (so why have it even?!?), but when they do it’s a potential intro to a full on Brazil situation.
Luckily the whole thing is generally considered a waste of time, so usually nothing comes of it. But why make yourself a target if you can avoid it?
In the years after this policy was put into place, there were news stories about how effective it had been in eliminating backyard meth production. You don't see those stories anymore. I suggest, with weak confidence, that the reason you don't isn't that backyard meth has roared back, but rather that it's so decisively not a part of the equation anymore that stats about it don't really matter. Meth comes from overseas now, not from backyards.
That doesn't solve the meth consumption problem, but it does eliminate one significant meth externality.
Without having to give ID, find a pharmacist, etc. I remember those days. They're long gone, obviously.
But if cops will choke someone to death about selling a cigarette, do you really want them to know about you buying Sudafed?
It’s funny that there is no outrage about a national psuedophredrine database. But people go nuts about a national gun database
Sudafed PE is a much more salient and annoying topic than the behind-the-counter real Sudafed. I think it really does piss people off to get tricked into buying fake decongestant. But that's a separable issue from having to ask (and to show ID) to buy the real stuff.
That Sudafed "basically is" meth misunderstands chemistry, and the resourcefulness of the real life Walter Whites of the world. Hells Angels and the Cartels operate under the nose of the DEA so there's no way meth or drugs are going away. It's time for the government to admit they lost the current battle of the war on drugs to drugs. Current tactics aren't working and it's time to take the war to the demand side of the equation. Cut down the demand for drugs by getting addicts off opiates and stimulants with an army of therapists and councilors and rehab programs. With a large helping of harm reduction and government assistance. Wishful thinking, I know, but making all forms of basic chemistry illegal is like trying to make water not wet.
The difference between a Sodium ion and a Sodium atom is one of the profoundest in chemistry and a fundamental topic of its high school version.
i.e., the law didn't do much to halt meth production but did put a bunch of barriers around a useful drug _and_ promoted the use of phenylephrine instead, a useless drug in pill form. A huge net negative.
If you want to sell pseudoephedrine, your org has to "self certify", keep a logbook purchasers have to sign, require ID, enforce the purchase limits, train employees, etc. But, the logbook doesn't go anywhere unless some investigation or audit prompts that. So, if you're a really determined cooker, you can still go to a bunch of different stores...though you're leaving a paper trail. And some big brands might cross-check and have an org-wide electronic log book.
IIRC, its reported to a centralized state database in (near) realtime in some states, but in any case it is definitely the case that chain pharmacies generally have their own electronic tracking and flagging to avoid getting nailed the way CVS did [0], which may be shared systems like MethCheck [1], which can also be used by independent pharmacies.
So, you’ve got to choose your targets carefully for your “shop at lots of different pharmacies” plan.
[0] https://www.justice.gov/archive/usao/cac/Pressroom/pr2010/14...
https://help.eaglesoa.com/29/en-n-eagle/Pharmacy/Pseudoephed...
Anecdotally, I usually by psuedophredrine at CVS. I bought some in Orlando and tried to buy more at a completely unrelated store in Puerto Rico and was denied.
Isn't meth a lot easier to come by these days? I have to imagine it's more convenient to cook street meth back into Sudafed to fix your stuffy nose than it is to cook Sudafed into meth to get your fix.
https://improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume19/v19i3/Pse...
Maybe, but more people are willing to do felonies to get/sell meth than to do the same thing for pseudoephedrine, and its just as illegal to by meth to cook pseudoephedrine as to cook meth from pseudoephedrine.
I'm apparently wrong about that. Seems NPLEX/MethCheck was made a requirement US state by US state over a number of years. So there's no national monitoring, but many (most?) US states require it and give law enforcement access. And like most things set up that way, enforcement and monitoring varies by state/county/etc.
Based on a few comments here, having it behind the counter is apparently pretty much just a waste of time, with meth production having moved to some other synthesis.
Then had to disengage based on what it was doing to my blood pressure.
Third generation antihistamines are amazing.
Zyrtec changed my life.
I used to majorly struggle with ‘hayfever’ as we called it, to the point it ruined my summer.
I was miserable as a child, only winter gave relief as I was allergic to both tree and grass pollen.
Then zirtec came out. Originally as a prescription and that coupled with Flonase completely got rid of my symptoms without fatigue!
The old antihistamines I’d have to take so many to get help that I could barely keep my eyes open.
Then I moved to Texas from UK and the flora was completely different thus I didn’t react at all!
It was heavenly.
Then I moved to Oregon and many, many, trees and plants are the same as in the UK and my allergies came back.
Much weaker this time as a lot of people age out of these types of allergies, as my mother did.
OTC zirtec sorts it out.
Anecdotal really but I thought I’d share.
Pseudoephedrine literally is an amphetamine, and famously the precursor to meth(amphetamine). I don't have a similar reaction but I'm not surprised some people are more sensitive.
But yeah it does work, smashingly. Also I found changing my AC air filter helped.
And now going back on-site, the headcolds you pick up with proximity to people, Sudafed was AWESOME, it's just a pita to get and I shouldn't use it a lot.