My household is sharing a big, nasty cold, so I went to pick up some decongestants. It turns out everything is now proudly Psuedoephedrine Free, even things like Sudafed, whose name is a cutesy pidgin pronunciation of Pseudo-ephedrine.
What’s the deal? Is it just the meth paranoia?
Yes, because of new federal laws you can still buy products containing psuedoephedrine, but you have to go to the pharmacy counter and show ID. You’ve probably seen the ads for some products (Claritin-D comes to mind) where they say “Others have changed their formula so they don’t have to be sold behind the counter, but we haven’t”.
Since this is GQ I won’t say what I really think of this legislation, but it does make it more inconvenient for those of us who are constantly plugged up.
Pretty much.
You can still get pseudoephedrine without a prescription, but you have to go to the pharmacist, provide your name and anddress (and ID?) and sign for the package. The pharmaceutical companies decided that rather than lose all the customers who will not go through that hassle, they would come out with some alternative products that were not bound by the same strictures.
If you need the real thing, just go to your pharmacist and ask for it.
Now for the real question - does the new alternative work as well as the ephedrine version?
Pseudoephedrine can be used, like you suggested, to create meth. So the government passed laws restricting its sale (It has to be kept in a locked cabinet or behind the counter, a person can only buy so much per day/month, records have to be kept of the buyers.
So,. most of the drug companies are making their decongestants without pseudoephedrine so their products don’t fall under the new law.
Unfortunately, the answer to that one is “it depends”. It seems to vary from person to person – I know several people who say the alternative works just fine for them, but it doesn’t do as much for me. Then again, my nasal plumbing is so screwed up I probably shouldn’t be used as a baseline.
You can still get pseudoephedrine, but you have to buy it from the pharmacist (the boxes are behind the counter) and present an ID and sign for it. In Illinois, you’re limited to a certain amount (I forget what) within a certain time frame (I also forget what) and that’s total, not at each store. My mom tried to buy me some cold medicine on her way over, but couldn’t because she’d maxed out her “allotment” at an entirely different store earlier in the week. How did they know? They wouldn’t tell her.
And the rest of my comments will have to wait for the pit, I’m afraid.
It is not paranoia. Many stores had it behind the counter long before any laws were made because it was flying off the shelves into peoples pockets. And it wasn’t the stuffy who were stealing it.
There is no reason to not buy the old stuff if it works for you. You just have to ask for it now. Just don’t ask for 20 boxes.
Yes. Largely unfounded, I might add. Although pseudoephedrine is a component in meth production and products whose sole ingredient is PE probably should be regulated, it’s very difficult to extract it from preparations that have it mixed in with a bunch of other ingredients; the average meth lab “chemist” is not going to be able to do it.
Huh. My doctor told me to stop using pseudoephedrine a few years back because, being a diabetic, it might kill me. That was my guess as to why they’re labelled that.
Then all those meth heads were deluded into stealing all those boxes. Yes it was and is still widely used in the production of meth.
Isn’t this actually the source of the meth labs blowing up? The meth labbers need to use (explosive) chemicals to get the binders to seperate. They are getting the pills from a variety of sources, and there was evidence that people were buying up store stock, then using chemicals to seperate the binders.
Meth purity rates, and rate of addiciton, tend to drop whenever the availability of the pseudphedrine is tightened down.
That may be, but according to the Department of Justice, one unintended consequence of the law is that production in Mexico is up dramatically despite attempts by the Mexican government to control it. (It is exported to here, of course.) Another is that availability of meth in the US is sharply increasing, both from the Mexican supply and from a form called “Ice” that is smoked. The DOJ cites NIDA: “According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), smoking methamphetamine may result in more rapid addiction to the drug than snorting or injection because smoking causes a nearly instantaneous, intense, and longer-lasting high.”
Chem labs blow up because of the chems used to seperate the binders in the pill. This is one reason to move the pills behind the counter.
Also, re: the purity of meth dropping and the addiction rate dropping (was short lived):
the chemicals became more expensive, and the purity of meth on America’s streets started to plunge—along with addiction rates. “We at Krebs Biochemicals would have been happy if the DEA or other American authorities had told us, ‘You can deal with these guys, they’re OK, but don’t deal with these guys,’” says Dr. R.T. Ravi, an administrator at the company. “We would rather that our product did not fall into the wrong hands.”
“Soon, however, the cartel would be back in business. Cold medicines remained unregulated for years, and the cartel took advantage of the situation, scooping up pills by the tens of thousands, even punching them out of their packets and distilling the ephedrine and pseudoephedrine in them to make meth. Today, the number of meth addicts is skyrocketing: With 1.4 million users in the U.S. alone and millions more around the world, the United Nations calls meth the most abused hard drug on earth.”
Since we’re close to the Canada, we get a lot of coverage of drug busts coming across the border.
A few weeks ago, there was one that consisted of ingredients for meth manufacture. The pseudphedrine was a white powder. The report said the powder was the chemical before it was pressed into pills. They didn’t say how the smugglers got the raw drug.
That makes the restrictions here seem futile as well as inconvenient.
Phenylephrine is effective for a shorter duration than pseudoephedrine. This is an article about a study that says it doesn’t work very well at all.
My husband has a lot of sinus trouble, and he’s willing to stand in line at the pharmacy to get the good stuff.
Bring back phenylpropanolamine!!!
Maybe the average 8th grade dropout hillbilly doens’t have the chemistry knowledge to isolate it from OTC medication, but it doens’t stop them from trying.
And I can’t take dextromethorphan because it would react with my SSRI. Treating cold symptoms is an obstacle course! Our co-op has stopped pseudophedrine products altogether–not worth the hassle.