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To be honest, I find the UK law to be absolutely stupid in this regard. I needed to buy 10 packs of paracetamol, and at local morrisons I was told I couldn't, maximum was 2 packs(16 tablets each). So I bought two packs, went out of the store, came back in, bought another two, repeated the process 5x and got my ten packs. The whole law is just an annoyance, nothing else. If I wanted to kill myself with paracetamol I could easily get even a 1000 tablets, would just need to drive around a few supermarkets but this law would not stop me from doing it.

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> The whole law is just an annoyance, nothing else.

This is not true. It's about preventing impulsive suicides, not premeditated ones. If a depressed person is having an episode and all they have in their house is 16 pills, then it removes the opportunity: maybe by the time they've make it to the shops and buy more, the moment will have passed, and a life would be saved.

It's been shown time and time again that you can reduce absolute suicide rates by removing opportunities like this. If I remember correctly, there was something similar involving gas ovens, though I can't find the reference now. Guns, bridges, etc. are all similar too.

When it comes down to it, if someone's determined enough to kill themselves, they will, but the truth is most people aren't and doing things like only selling small quantities of pills really can prevent suicides.

Strongly agree with your post.

About gas ovens: There's less carbon monoxide in modern gas delivery. (http://io9.com/5959303/why-have-people-stopped-committing-su...)

Thanks! That was the one I was thinking of.

>The switch from coal gas to natural gas also had one unexpected effect. During the ‘50s and ‘60s, about half of the suicides in Britain were by coal gas. By the ‘70s, when the transition to natural gas was complete, the number of gas suicides had dropped to zero and the overall suicide rate was down a third. Even the suicidal appreciate convenience. If it's too much trouble, as Dorothy Parker said, "You might as well live."

Also, regarding my above post (which I can't edit now), I didn't mean to imply that "just" 16 pills was even remotely safe because I'm sure it's not (I'm not a doctor) but the general point stands...

Rather, it's just another example of the uk becoming more and more of a nanny state.

BBC article following reductions in successful suicides (interestingly it says no reduction in number of overdoses. But we have a pretty good reversal for paracetamol-induced overdose - N-acetyl-Cystine - so they should have a pretty good recovery)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-21370910

Yes, but it's very important that anyone with an overdose gets treatment as soon as possible, even if they feel no ill effects at that time.

Death from paracetamol overdose is by liver failure, and that takes a week or so to happen, but after the first 24 hours there's not much you can do to prevent it apart from liver transplant.

Paracetamol overdose is a small number of liver transplants in the UK, but a significant number of the 'super urgent' transplants.

> Despite the reduction in deaths from paracetamol, the study found there had been no decline in overdose cases after 1998.

Is the attempted-suicide overdose rate in decline? That seems to be the main question as to whether the law helped.

The UK law is stupid. My sister took her life using paracetamol. She just drove to 3 different pharmacies and bought the max amount at each. She also bought sleeping tablets so that the pain of her dying liver would not wake her.

A few days before this, my family had tried to have her sectioned as mentally ill (she was suicidal from post-natal depression). They psychiatrists kept her in for observation for 48 hours, then released her. 24 hours later she was dead, and her child an orphan.

All the law did was slow her down for maybe 15 minutes in her suicide attempt.

That's awfully tragic and I'm very sorry for your loss. :(

No law can prevent all such tragedies. But failing to have prevented this one doesn't make the law stupid, or worthless. It does successfully prevent other cases. What happened with your sister is certainly horrible, but you can't generalise from that to every case.

Would you also say murder laws are stupid because they only reduce the incidence of murder, not eliminate it? Of course these laws aren't going to stop a planned suicide, but they will prevent spur-of-the-moment ones that use this method, of which there are plenty. I'm sorry for your loss, but the answer isn't railing against measures which may help others.

Firstly, I have trouble thinking of situations where one would need to buy 10 packs of paracetamol. Care to elaborate?

Secondly, one cannot prevent one from committing suicide, but making it harder will give people time to reconsider their planned suicide.

My dad lives in a really remote region and doesn't go out much, so he asked me to buy like a yearly supply of paracetamol for him(along with a trunk full of food). What I did not expect, was that it's going to be such an annoying problem. As I said, I did buy what I wanted, except that it took me 10 minutes instead of 2. If you want to make it hard for people,just make every medicine prescription-only.

Laws are usually a compromise. I would say that preventing some suicides at the expense of forcing you to spend ten minutes to buy a year’s worth of painkillers is a very decent compromise.

Really remote region... In the UK...? Does such a thing exist?

It's all relative. The UK does include some remote isles of Scotland such as Shetland, however, with up to 10 flights a day, it may not be considered too remote in regards to access to supplies!

There are very few places that come close to feeling remote, certainly. And it's only getting more crowded =/

I can understand that, especially given the "my dad" part. For all we know, his dad is not allowed to drive a car and not the quickest on his foot anymore. "Really remote" is a relative thing.

I still think that 10 packs of Paracetamol, if I had them in my home, would last me not for a year, but easily for the rest of my life. But maybe I am still too young and healthy to judge that.

Oh, and I guess you can get really remote in the UK. There's plenty of remote islands (with affordable housing: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4866217)

Oh, my dad is easily taking a pill of paracetamol per day, he tried other drugs but because of other medications he is taking for his cancer his choice is really limited and he is in pain for most of the time. What I bought him won't even last a year. And sure, if he absolutely needed to, he probably would be able to get some on his own, but it was a more convenient for me to do a massive shop and buy him supplies that will last him a while.

The laws are frustrating for people like your father.

He could get it added to a prescription, which makes getting the quantity easy but it then becomes more expensive. (Unless he qualifies for free 'scripts.)

Or you could just haggle with a pharmacist.

But, yes, it's an added hassle at a time when you very much don't need the extra hassle.

Northern Scotland, maybe?

confused old people die from paracetamol overdoses. this helps reduce that, afaik (no evidence to hand, but read up on painkillers not long ago as i needed to take them over a fairly long period). and given that you could work around it easily, it seems that the cost to others is not so high...

My mom has Alzheimer's, and recently started hallucinating. After several (!) trips to the ER and doctor, someone finally thought to do a blood test, and found that she had a severe sodium|potassium deficiency (now I don't remember which). Turns out she was thirsty due to the dry climate and it being winter, and she kept drinking water, forgetting that she had just finished a glass, which led to the mineral deficiency, which caused the hallucinations.

I can't imagine how hard it would to control be if she was taking painkillers on an as-needed basis for a long time. People with dementia are often surprisingly clever and resourceful, considering the disease.

Dementia is a bug in the program. The program is powerful, and the bug is a small change that makes it powerfully wrong.

It is amazing that someone could drink that much water, without a restroom bream or just not feeling thirsty anymore. But I can imagine overdrinking over a course of days in response to feeling dryness, and not realizing that she is overdoing it.

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