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The Uselessness of Phenylephrine (2022)

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Re: The Uselessness of Phenylephrine (2022)

#271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can buy 6 boxes of sudafed per month (24 doses each). Isn’t that more than the recommended (and probably safe) daily limit? I dont doubt your intentions but I don’t think you actually need 6 boxes per month + a stash.

They mention one box every six months, which is entirely reasonable.

Which is 2 boxes * n years + 6 boxes available at any given time.

Im not saying it’s unreasonable, just that the monthly limit is probably higher than he realized and he doesnt need to stockpile them.

Re: The Uselessness of Phenylephrine (2022)

#272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a US federal law (the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act of 2005)

And now we've got a fentanyl epidemic filling the void and even more power handed to Mexican cartels since meth got harder to produce domestically. Drugs continue to win the war on drugs.

Drugs winning the “war on drugs” would be a problem for the “war on drugs” only if reducing drug use had actually been a priority of the “war on drugs” at any time in its half century of existence.

Re: The Uselessness of Phenylephrine (2022)

#273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can buy 6 boxes of sudafed per month (24 doses each). Isn’t that more than the recommended (and probably safe) daily limit? I dont doubt your intentions but I don’t think you actually need 6 boxes per month + a stash.

When your kid gets sick late and the pharmacist leaves at 6, why not have a packs of pills wherever you are. Or god forbid, you run out at work and forgot the CVS takes a siesta nationwide at 1:30.

Absolutely. But it sounded like he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to buy enough at once, hence the accumulation.

Re: The Uselessness of Phenylephrine (2022)

#274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GP didn't say your blood pressure meds or pseudoephedrine don't work, they said "most drugs don't work." I would have preferred some specifics, but we didn't get them so you shouldn't argue as though they were given.

Do you think that 80% of prescribed drugs don’t work? Even 50%? I’m limiting it to prescribed drugs because those are the ones that a pharmacists would be most concerned about. And a “pharmacist” isn’t exactly the best trained person when it comes to knowing how to do a drug research or to know its efficacy for patients compared to even a GP who is monitoring patients and keeping records of blood work and other stats

They didn’t say prescription drugs. OTC drugs are also drugs. (In fact, they’re the drugs the article is about!) And the majority of drugs are OTC drugs. I would fully believe that the majority of OTC drugs do basically nothing.

(Consider: how many problems are there with your body that you’re actually likely to be able to solve with a drug that can be taken safely and correctly at basically any dose, basically any schedule, quitting whenever you like, and without checking for cross-drug interactions? Because those are the requirements for a drug to be OTC. There exist far more OTC drugs than there should, given the number of OTC-able problems, is what I’m saying.)

Re: The Uselessness of Phenylephrine (2022)

#275
Question: why does anyone want to use stimulant decongestants anyway, when corticosteroid nasal sprays (the -metazolines) are equally effective at treating a runny nose, and much more effective at unplugging a stuffy nose?

Re: The Uselessness of Phenylephrine (2022)

#276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not being told "no". You can just go buy some Sudafed right now if you want to. It's not like there's an application process. There is a rate limit; that's it.

In order for a rate limit to be effective, at some point it has to apply, and at that point, I'm told "no." More concretely, in order to implement a rate limit, you have to sign an electronic log book, and the government can view that log book whenever it likes, without any sort of review or auditing, of course. This isn't the primary concern anyways, the point was, in order to implement this seemingly simple action,…

> In order for a rate limit to be effective, at some point it has to apply, and at that point, I'm told "no."

The alternative is you don't buy any Sudafed in the first place. So you've basically told yourself "no" anyway.

I realize you dislike the government logging your purchases, but you haven't answered GP's question about why you dislike it.

Re: The Uselessness of Phenylephrine (2022)

#278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a US federal law (the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act of 2005)

And now we've got a fentanyl epidemic filling the void and even more power handed to Mexican cartels since meth got harder to produce domestically. Drugs continue to win the war on drugs.

The majority of fentanyl is produced by a handful of labs in China. If the USA were serious about stopping the fentanyl overdose problem, it could be done with political pressure.

Ask yourself why that isn't happening?

Re: The Uselessness of Phenylephrine (2022)

#279
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've maintained my own reserve of pseudoephedrine for years. Synthesizing it from widely-available and affordable street drugs, I assume. https://improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume19/v19i3/Pse...

At least if I followed that path, I would not be required to have my purchase recorded in an insecure government database.

But what if it were a secure government database?
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