Fraggin' stupid intended side-effects!

[elfs]

We ran out of Children's Sudafed this evening and every store I stopped by to pick some up had either stopped carrying it or had locked it up and nobody on the floor had the key. Washington state has implemented a law making Sudafed a "behind the counter only" medicine, and I have to sign a form whenever I want to buy some. Y'know, I'd rather the people of my state be free to fry their own brains in whatever imaginative way they want than to have to sign a form that nobody will ever see just so my kid doesn't go to bed with a runny nose. Grr...

Any bets Sudafed and Tylenol stop making the children's stuff because it's just too damned hard to sell? And any bets what's left gets more expensive as stores tack on the significantly higher handling fees because it's no longer part of the distribution routine at their end of the supply chain?

Comments

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

Sudafed

[(Anonymous)]

Those rules went into effect here last year, it has caused the number of meth labs in the state to drop to almost nothing.

[edichka2.livejournal.com]

Elf -- I must disagree with you here. I'm fairly libertarian (lower-case "l") in most social issues, but I have no problem with making pseudoephedrine difficult to obtain in large amounts. I don't know to what extent you are aware of the damage that the manufacture and use of methamphetamine are doing, particularly to rural communities, but the social ravages of crack and heroin are a genteel cocktail party by comparison. This shit is incredibly cheap and easy to come by, and incredibly addictive and destructive. Recovery rates are abysmal.

Anecdote: A new staff member at our office is also a penal officer at a youth facility in the Portland area... among her teen and even pre-teen charges, meth addiction is around 80%.

C'mon, guys. It's just a cold medicine, and it's just a bit of inconvenience. Please consider the bigger picture.

Cheers,
- Eddie

[mothball-07.livejournal.com]

It's just a bit of inconvenience

Well, no. That's the problem. If it *were* just a bit of an inconvenience, that would be one thing. Only being able to buy one bottle at a time : inconvenience. Not being able to get it in the middle of the night because there's nobody authorized with a key at that hour : problem. Distributors changing the drugs they sell to get around this : SERIOUS problem.

But the bigger issue is that it's part of the nanny state. I'm tired of the solution to every bad choice and show of irresponsibility being that I have to give up more of my autonomy.

[edichka2.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I still disagree. It's not that hard to plan in advance and buy a bottle when you're well and out grocery shopping. I'm pretty confident that pseudoephedrine will continue to be available, given its utility and safety when used as intended.

I question whether not having everything you want available at market, any time you want it, is the same as giving up your autonomy.

Best wishes (and see you tonight),
- Eddie

[omahas.livejournal.com]

It's not that hard to plan in advance and buy a bottle when you're well and out grocery shopping.

In fact, Elf went out to go pick it up *because* when I went out shopping earlier in the week, I couldn't find it in the two places I went to (one of them a pharmacy).

That's a *problem*

[edichka2.livejournal.com]

You can call around in advance.

- Eddie, obviously with an opinion on this matter

[srmalloy.livejournal.com]

Just to play devil's advocate here, how much of those 'social ravages' are caused by the actual effects of the drug use, and how much are caused by the illegal nature of the drugs, making them cash cows for the gangs that peddle it and the brokers up their supply chain, with all the turf wars over control of sales territory and profits that result? How many gangs do you see that are still making millions of dollars from smuggling liquor into speakeasies, and how many shootouts do you see over control of the distribution of that smuggled booze?

[edichka2.livejournal.com]

I'm speaking primarily about the direct effects of the drug use.

Anecdote: I've spoken with a number of my medical colleagues about this, all of whom have agreed that we just don't often see old or long-time meth users... primarily because so many of them fucking DIE -- of strokes, heart attacks, sepsis, and other directly attributable maladies.

(Addendum to earlier anecdote: forgot to mention that of the 80% or so of the teen/pre-teen offenders mentioned, most of them are injecting the drug, not just snorting or smoking it. There's a very high rate of resistant Staph and Strep skin infections among meth injectors, not to mention the HIV and hepatitis issues.)

I'm of the opinion that this drug has a remarkably great tendency to irretrievably ruin both physical and mental health, more commonly and more irretrievably than crack or heroin. The objections I've heard to restricting availability of the essential ingredient do not, in my opinion, seem terribly weighty.

Best wishes,
- Eddie

Just as an aside to the discussion...

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[marketeer]

I think it's everywhere now. We have the same thing here in Virginia.

[bldrnrpdx.livejournal.com]

I don't know that Sudafed and Tylenol will stop making the children's versions altogether. There was some question about taking children's aspirin off the shelf altogether when there was a huge rise in the incidence of Reye Syndrome. You now occasionally see it 'prescribed' as a preventative heart medicine.

Sudafed

[(Anonymous)]

I have found that the generic form of Sidafed.. pseudenopherine (?D) is still available in the ailses, seme for geneic Claritin (Loitradine (?)...