What are the limits? (Asked as a US guy who buys the 500 x 500mg bottles at BJ's.)
Obviously you can still overdose by going to multiple stores and popping them all out of the blister packs but it puts enough of a barrier in that you have to be more determined (and more knowledgeable about what amount will actually kill you). Apparently it works.
You can essentially forget the maximum pill numbers for paracetamol/ibuprofen when it comes to prescriptions in the UK. Doctors can prescribe hundreds of either pill to be given to a patient at once (eg if someone is prescribed to take 8 a day and they get their meds monthly, as is the case with one paracetamol recipient I know, the pharmacy gives him multiple 100x 500mg paracetamol boxes each month.)
(To be clear, "given to them at once" as in dispensing the pills, not giving to take all at once!)
They do that indeed, though I am not sure wthere it is the law of their own "do-gooder" policies. I don't think it is the law because it happened to me a few times to just pull a sad face and have the employee at the till just go "fine, but just this time".
This is slightly ridiculous, IMHO: You can buy more if you want, just split transactions. And of course no-one stops you from buying a trolley-full of vodka and bleach.
You can split transactions, but committing suicide takes effort, and a relatively significant rate of suicides are impulsive. For impulsive suicide, having a barrier or interruption can prevent the attempt. Something as small as a phone call interrupting you as you get the pills out could be sufficient to move past a particular impulse.
There is also a huge difference in suicide attempt method depending on gender. Women tend to gravitate towards pills, while men are more likely to use a gun.
So IMHO this restriction is an attempt at limiting the stock people have at home. Although I would argue this is none of the shop's business and, as far as I can gather, this is not a legal restriction.
Correct. But this isn't a bad thing - it means people are less likely to have a large supply of dangerous pills at hand if they get a sudden urge to kill themselves or attempt a cry for help during a depressive episode.
> Although I would argue this is none of the shop's business
In practical terms it appears that this actually does reduce suicides and poisonings; it's a significant reduction in suffering in the world.
The cost is a very small and temporary limitation on personal convenience. It's surely worth it. See also seatbelt laws.
> and, as far as I can gather, this is not a legal restriction.
It is in some countries, but the legal obligation is on the vendor, not the individual. If you are confident that you do need a larger cache of tablets then you can do that yourself with only minimal extra inconvenience.
I think it's an elegant solution. Suicides are reduced, but the state doesn't overrule individual decision making on what their needs are.
Those 'voluntary' limitations, and there are others, are a bit of a pet peeve of mine because they strike me as hypocrisy/posturing/paternalism.
Limiting to two... I don't know, it has occasionally annoyed me (when I think I want to 'stock up') but I suppose there's just no reason you actually need more than that at once (other than self-harm or with a prescription) so meh why not if it has a small chance at stopping a few suicide attempts.
Are there lots of cases where someone tried to overdose but was saved by it 'only' being 16 grams of paracetamol?
Most suicidality is impulsive and transient, so simple interventions to reduce access to means of suicide can have very significant results. There's very little you can do to prevent a sufficiently determined person from dying by suicide, but most people who die by suicide aren't strongly motivated to die - they're just briefly overwhelmed by life.
https://www.bmj.com/content/329/7474/1076
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/means-matter/saves...
I can only speak from my experience, but at one point I took all the paracetamol I had (suicidal and pretty drunk, the taste of cheap red wine and paracetamol is... unpleasant to say the least). I ended up fine after a friend forced me to go to the hospital the next day. If I had more tablets around, I would have taken them too. So it likely wouldn't stop someone who planned to kill themselves, however with me anyway not having like 100 tablets around did help due to it being impulsive enough.
It might have been quite a big difference due to how long after the fact I went to the hospital, I took quite a lot but it had done little enough damage that some medicine in my arm over the course of about a day and having to avoid alcohol and paracetamol for a while was enough to fix it.
I imagine a lot of cases are quite similar to mine and it probably did make quite a big difference with me as I only had 2 boxes around and one wasn't completely full.
Your nose is running? Pop some NyQuil. Hangover? NyQuil. Headache from the cold? NyQuil. Cold? NyQuil.
Just look at the list of symptoms it helps with at their site: https://vicks.com/en-us/shop-products/nyquil
https://tedium.co/2021/11/03/nyquil-cold-medicine-history/
https://www.npr.org/2022/09/22/1124252556/nyquil-chicken-cha...
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/fda-nyquil-chicken-warning_n_...
Yes, it's very common, often around joint pain. Surely obesity and sedentary lifestyle play a role.
60 million Americans take Acetaminophen (paracetamol) on a weekly basis.
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In Australia, the regulating body for that stuff announced new limits back in 2023. They'll apply from Feb 2025 onwards:
https://www.tga.gov.au/news/media-releases/tga-makes-final-d...
* reduce the maximum size of packs available for general sale (e.g. supermarkets and convenience stores) from 20 to 16 tablets or capsules
* reduce the maximum size of packs available in pharmacies without the supervision of a pharmacist (i.e. ‘Pharmacy Only’ packs) from 100 to 50 tablets or capsules
* make other pack sizes of up to 100 tablets or capsules available only under the supervision of a pharmacist (‘Pharmacist Only’ medicines).
Those limits don't seem all that different from the existing pack sizes commonly on shelves though. So there's very likely some existing limits around pack sizes already.