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>>go to the pharmacy counter and get Pseudoephedrine

Thanks DEA, you used to just be able to get that in Nyquil and all the others, but the DEA in their moronic idea that drug dealers are going and buying precursors from the local CVS (not stealing them in bulk) has to abuse millions of law abiding sick people forcing them to sign the "papers please" log book treating them like criminals for wanting to feel better.

There’s some places where you can’t get it at all without a prescription.

Obviously retail pseudoephedrine was never a substantial contributor to methamphetamine production (tell me again why that’s illegal?).

Which raises the question, what what the real goal in preventing people from buying functional medicines?

Frankly I think the specific intent was exactly this. The main effect was to cause human suffering and Occams razor tells me the main effect was probably the intended effect.

> Occams razor

I think Hanlon's razor is more appropriate.

Somewhere there was a team of people in the government who worked untold hours studying this, proposing solutions and ultimately having change enacted. This would have been good for career progression for all involved, not because it was actually good, but simply because they did something. And therein lies government.

Hanlon’s razor is a thought-terminating cliche in most circumstances. Malice exists very frequently, as does profit-seeking or other motives that are indistinguishable from malice, and it's not at all the same thing as occam's "don't say god did it when there's a perfectly good mortal explanation" razor.

It's essentially "memetic mimicry", where a second meme rides on the coattails of the first one, simply by obeying the overall form of the first meme so that its credibility "transfers over" to the second one. Like a common snake imitating a dangerous venomous one.

In the DEAs case it was literally confirmed to be operating on malice since at least the Nixon and Reagan years, when it was overtly and publicly wielded as a weapon to disrupt hippies and black communities, specifically. There is absolutely no reason to assume good-faith when law enforcement is involved, and it is in fact a waste of the openness of your mind to do so. Go be open-minded about something else, literally anyone deserves that more than actual literal drug cops.

> “You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities,” Ehrlichman said. “We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-rich...

> methamphetamine production (tell me again why that’s illegal?

Because it ruins people's lives, that's why.

And the vast majority of people who make it don't have proper chemistry training, lab equipment, PPE, or pure chemicals to make pharmaceutical grade methamphetamine with no impurities or unreacted reagents.

I'm all for medicine that helps people and amphetamines absolutely can, but methamphetamine doesn't help people. It enslaves them.

Get the govt to make it properly, give it out for free in treatment centres where they have to consume it, giving an interface to the addicts for mental health and drug rehab staff (or have a trapdoor that sends the addicts to a gator pond when they walk in the door)

Shall the addicts stay in the treatment center while they are high? Or will the treatment center release them after checking vitals to allow them to go do what they want to when high (which for many addicts is "have as much sex as time will allow")

Maybe they go into the gator pond _after_ getting high and the staff can take bets on it

Over-criminalization of society, and the fall out from the "war on drugs" has ruined far far far far far more lives then illegal drug abuse ever could or would

That is with out getting into the debate on if it is even ethical for a government to regulation what a person consumes, even if you believe it is the current method of criminalization and prohibition is not effective in the stated goal of reducing drug use/abuse, a lesson we should have learned as a society with the passage of the 18th amendment and its repeal the 21st amendment

Of course that is not the real goal but .....

Ah yes, the old criminalization doesn't reduce usage misconception. Prohibition reduced usage of alcohol and is not why it failed. Prohibition failed for all of the other problems prohibition caused. Usage of alcohol declined, by quite a bit actually.

So do alcohol, gambling and bad relationships.

>Obviously retail pseudoephedrine was never a substantial contributor to methamphetamine production

I don't know how it compares to organzied production, but people certainly do cook meth from retail pseudoephedrine. In my neck of woods, it's a fairly popular pasttime, since all ingredients can be purchased in a single trip to a shopping mall.

> if you are actually congested, go to the pharmacy counter and get Pseudoephedrine

Yes, that's what works for me. And of course it used to be available OTC until the government decided to control access to it because of fears of meth.

Not fears, but actual improper usage.

What does that even mean?

If you try to keep milk cold by putting it in the oven, that’s improper usage. It won’t stay cold.

If you’re saying people are trying to get high and are successful getting high, then it sounds like they’re accomplishing their goal and their usage of the product is proper for their intended use case.

Edit: Oh, you’re saying you don’t like what others are doing, but aren’t actually willing to state the fact that its just like your opinion man.

No, fears that leaving it available OTC would result in lots of people using it to make meth. Which, as far as I can tell, was a fantasy: yes, lots of people were using meth, but there was no real evidence that they were using OTC pseudoephedrine to do it. (And, as others have pointed out elsewhere in this discussion, there is no need to go through all the work of making it from pseudoephedrine when the Mexican drug cartels can provide it cheaper anyway.) Which makes the government's position rather like the old joke about the man who claimed to have invented anti-tiger dust:

Look at this wonderful anti-tiger dust I've invented?

But this is the USA, there are no wild tigers within thousands of miles of here.

See how effective my dust is?

I mean we can see a demonstrable and quantifiable MASSIVE decrease in meth usage and overdose circa 2005 when the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act went into effect.

Also, it's still available without a prescription, last I checked, it was just behind the counter/required an ID to track if you're grabbing a pack from every Walgreens in a 50 mile radius in a single night

> Also, it's still available without a prescription, last I checked,

That's jurisdiction dependent. I had to remember to pack some when traveling for work in Oregon, since it was not available, even behind the counter.

> I mean we can see a demonstrable and quantifiable MASSIVE decrease in meth usage and overdose circa 2005 when the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act went into effect.

Really? I couldn't find any data from that far back, but data from 2009 on shows that meth usage, overdose, and arrests climb pretty dramatically pretty much every year.

> I mean we can see a demonstrable and quantifiable MASSIVE decrease in meth usage and overdose circa 2005 when the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act went into effect.

It’s now synthesized in industrial sized cartel owned labs in Mexico using Chinese precursors and smuggled into the US, there’s no reason to keep pseudoephedrine restricted when it’s easier and cheaper to just buy the plentiful and cheap meth on the street.

Cheap meth can't compete with free shop lifted ingredients in homemade meth.

Do you know it was pseudoephedrine?

I remember you could buy bottles of mini-thins at the pos of pretty much every liquor store in the country in the late 90s/early 00s. Used to be sold in bottles of 100 for like 5 bucks.

Source?

> it's still available without a prescription, last I checked, it was just behind the counter/required an ID

Yes, which effectively makes it the same as needing a prescription because you can only get it if the pharmacy counter is open. Which is more restricted hours than the drugstore or grocery store itself.

My sister is on the short side. She went to the counter to buy some of this stuff and the pharmacist refused to believe her ID that said she was (substantially) older than 18. Granted, it was a California issued ID and the pharmacy was in Illinois, but still, what the hell?

Here in Australia we have the same restrictions on pseudoephedrine, possibly worse ones (you have to show ID and it gets recorded centrally so you don’t just pharmacy-hop)

And it’s done nothing. Hasn’t affected availability. Hasn’t cut down on illicit lab operations. Nothing.

People will say “It has cut down on the amount of pseudoephedrine going to illegal meth operations”, as if that in itself is a useful outcome instead of utterly meaningless.

When I lived in Sydney I had a few friends that frequently bought Rikodeine (dihydrocodeine cough syrup), which is also meant to be tracked via pharmacists recording IDs. My friends knew what pharmacies didn't bother to track it, normally if you were a 'repeat' customer and knew the pharmacist. They were able to buy 10~ bottles in a day from 8 - 10 pharmacies, repeating every few days. This was also in Sydney's central cbd so there's a pharmacy every other block.

I assume the situation is similar with pseudoephedrine, though the drug class/restrictions may be different.

Interesting you can get rikodeine at all, given that even mild (8mg) codeine tablets are now prescription only here. That stuff (from a quick search) appears to still be available OTC.

As someone who has always used low-dose codeine+whatever analgesics when I have had a bad cold or migraine, I resent these being removed from the market recently as well. People can tell me that paracetamol and ibuprofen are just as effective until they're blue in the face, but that little bit of opiate uplift when I'm feeling like absolute shit was very psychologically helpful... Oh well, this is the world we live in.

> until the government decided to control access to it because of fears of meth.

Passed as part of the Patriot Act re-authorization bill in 2005, because everybody knows terrorists and pseudoephedrine go hand in hand.

If I recall correctly, it was the resulting cash flow that needed to be laundered, and the potential of those operations to eventually result in the funding of terrorism, that was the alleged concern.

For what it’s worth, Afrin and other similar nasal sprays are by far the best decongestant.

The only issue is you can only take them for a few days straight, or you’ll have rebound congestion when you try to quit. There are oodles of stories online of people who didn’t heed that advice and upped their dosages again and again for months.

Here’s the best method: Afrin (etc.) at night so you can sleep, and during the day if you have something particular important going on. The next day, after you wake do a sinus rinse with xylitol. This clears out the Afrin preventing dependence, but xylitol also keeps things somewhat suppressed.

Continue until cold is done. Source: me, a person with a ridiculously bad immune system that has multiple colds a year that last 3 weeks with nearly full congestion.

(Also, Adderall is great for colds)

Afrin is so incredibly addictive that I highly recommend never using it… use it once and you’ll be hooked for years, trust me!

Yeah stick with the safe stuff, Adderall

I use it quite a few times a year (in bursts) and I'm not hooked. I gave instructions in my post as to how. Colds don't last as long for my wife so she just uses it for 2-3 days and then stops.

True. You get used to it after a few days and now can't sleep without it, in a never ending cycle. There are much better drugs now, for example fluticasone (Flonase, Avamys).

> (Also, Adderall is great for colds)

Do not go around saying this, even if it’s true. We’re experiencing a huge Adderall shortage, and the last thing we need is people who were on the fence deciding to get a Rx because it might help them with cold symptoms in the winter.

Well, I doubt many people are going to bother hoodwinking their doctors in order to get a prescription. It is a shame it can't just be sold over the counter though, as it really is the best cold medicine. It keeps your sinuses somewhat clear and gives you enough energy to get through the day.

It's probably a bad idea for anyone with a heart condition, in case anyone out there is getting a not-so-bright-idea.

The market is essentially just one step beyond basic snake oil. Instead companies mix various "approved" ingredients to create some branded concoction that they hope will stick from psychosomatic effects. For example "Excedrin" is just aspirin+acetaminophen+caffeine yet so many people swear by it rather than popping the two simple pills and considering if they really need another cup of coffee. The worst is when brand names are abused with suffixes to mean wildly different drugs, as if affinity for a corporate brand should come before consideration of the active ingredients.

Similar deceit happens with cleaning products, where "Clorox" spray or "Clorox" wipes aren't bleach at all. Rather the spray is just some mild acid (a poorer disinfectant), and the wipes are quat (aka "Lysol", makes your pets sick). This kind of thing should be patently illegal - any brand should be required to have consistent active ingredients.

Of course this isn't even considering the criminalization of well-working pseudoephedrine due to the government's dark ages persecution of drug-users-plus-everyone-else.

Not harmless with Acetaminophen of they don't realize it and also take pills at the same time, pretty narrow range to liver damage.

You might be thinking of aspirin, which is toxic at fairly low dosages. Acetaminophen (aka Tylenol) is much, much safer.

I'm pretty sure you have it backwards. Tylenol/Acetaminophen is quite hard on the liver.

https://www.health.harvard.edu/press_releases/acetaminophen_....

This is misleading. Tylenol in therapeutic dosages does not seem to have much ill effect on the liver, it is not like alcohols or other direct liver toxins. Even people with advanced stage liver disease can receive acetaminophen. When it becomes toxic at supratherapeutic doses it is very toxic.

Acetaminophen has a narrow therapeutic index and can cause severe and irreversible liver injury in doses around 10 g. A single tablet usually contains 500 mg, but because it's a component of so many other "combo" cold meds, including some syrups, it's easy for people to overdose while mixing OTC products to get over a flu.

Aspirin has a lower standard dose (325 mg), higher LD50 (probably around 20-25 g), and is generally safer. It has fallen out of favor because it's known to cause an exceedingly rare but deadly syndrome in a tiny percentage of children, and because it can have gastroenterological side effects.

Ibuprofen is probably the safest option? I'm sure it can be overdosed, but it almost never happens, whereas acetaminophen results in tons of hospitalizations every year.

> Ibuprofen is probably the safest option?

Ibuprofen can also be liver toxic, but I believe the LD50 is significantly higher than the other options. I have not been able to find an exact number online.

As has been mentioned by others in this discussion, ibuprofen can also cause stomach upset (my wife has this problem, even when she takes it with food).

> Ibuprofen is probably the safest option?

Are you kidding? Ibuprofen like most NSAIDS is terrible on the GI tract and the kidneys. People with healthy kidneys are usually fine with short courses, but even people with relatively mild chronic kidney disease should avoid NSAIDs.

People in their 20s that overuse NSAIDs end up needing kidney transplants. it's not that uncommon. The most common cause of peptic ulcer disease of this demographic (affluent westerners) after H pylori is NSAID use.

> It has fallen out of favor because it's known to cause an exceedingly rare but deadly syndrome in a tiny percentage of children

This has really nothing to do why aspirin has less common use among adults. Aspirin has poor analgesic effects relative to the doses and the risks of GI complications.

> acetaminophen results in tons of hospitalizations every year.

The impact of NSAID related complications is far greater in terms of kidney transplants and upper endoscopy interventions, and related ICU stays.

> Ibuprofen is probably the safest option?

I've heard it can damage the stomach lining if taken at the wrong time relative to eating. But yeah probably still the least-bad first-resort painkiller.

I didn't know about this and got a nasty ulcer after taking ibuprofen for 6 days in a row while dealing with a disease. I'm not touching this anymore and stick with a max of 2g of acetaminophen per day if I need painkillers

Aspirin and Ibuprofen will tear up your stomach and intestinal linings. Think internal bleeding. Alas I had to push back an epidural I desperately needed for back pain a few years ago by a week or two because I was taking too much Ibuprofen. I had blood in my urine as a result.

Ah, good point. People combine alcohol and other meds with that all the time, which can be not so harmless. We shouldn't be putting that in random meds for people who are stuffed up or have a cough.

If the phenylephrine thing is true, that means I placebo'd my way through COVID in addition to every cold I've had in the past 15 or so years.

Going from severely congested to not at all, every four hours, makes me think that it's got to be a "this only works in some people" drug.

Same. It has worked for me, and without the jitters and anxiety from pseudoephedrine (which is available OTC here in Canada still)

If it was a “works for some people” drug, you would expect to see a reproducible effect over and above placebo, but AFAICT that’s not the case with phenylephrine.

Is there something else you’re doing or taking alongside that might explain it?

If not … well, happy placebo-ing to you!

Acetaminophen can help you sleep as well. Less aching == more restful sleep which in my experience is the best cure for most minor illnesses.

>If you have a fever it can reduce it, but for a minor fever I'm not sure that is necessary.

I think it's generally good to have a mild fever since it's how your body makes itself inhospitable to viruses

I've heard that but I don't know if it has been borne out in any studies, so I didn't mention it in my original post.

correct. a fever is your body's self-cleaning oven

I shall mourn the loss of Phenylephrine. It worked for me, but I only ever suffered mild congestion. Not allergy-level super congestion, which I won't contest that it was ineffective against. Where it really helped me was with my post-nasal drip.

I take severe cold/flu medicine with all of these ingredients. Without it, I can't sleep at night and It takes me much longer to recover.

So to say it 'doesn't work' is nonsense.

> People feel sick and they go in and just say "I'll take whatever is strongest" and they get overcharged for these weird formulations that are sort of kitchen-sink type things.

Well, it doesn’t help that most states require you to go to the pharmacy counter for the stuff that actually works (pseudoephedrine), and in some states you actually need a prescription.

It is true. It created an incentive for people to avoid putting pseudoephedrine in things because most people weren't going to buy a formulation that they had to go to the counter for.