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The Uselessness of Phenylephrine (2022)

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Re: The Uselessness of Phenylephrine (2022)

#301

Post by Scoundreller »

trifurcate wrote: post #291
aniken wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of the funniest scene in the movie Idiocracy, where he loses track of which cable goes in the mouth vs ear vs butt. A laugh a day keeps the doctor away, enjoy :-) https://youtu.be/zop3VG_K9HU?si=k8LDptGhvQDxtsTB

For the future, please remove the ?si= parameter from your YouTube share links. It uniquely identifies you and allows Google to track your social circle with certainty. (Not that they couldn't do it already)

what if he wants google to know his love for idiocracy?

Re: The Uselessness of Phenylephrine (2022)

#302

Post by jccc »

tptacek wrote: post #263
lazide wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Name an over the counter medicine you need to show ID for.

Sudafed isn't an OTC medicine; it's a BTC medicine. Most medicines aren't OTC. But there are, obviously, OTC products that require ID; for instance, every alcoholic beverage.

Purchases of alcohol at the grocery store are not individually logged and tracked by personal ID. I’m certain that is not what happens when I show my birth date to a cashier.

Re: The Uselessness of Phenylephrine (2022)

#303

Post by cmrdporcupine »

pitaj wrote: post #300
wrs wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dextromethorphan is one of the other “scientifically proven ineffective” OTC products mentioned by the authors. Once when I had a quite severe cough I did some (highly motivated) research and my conclusion was that there is no such thing as an effective cough suppressant. At least, none that isn’t also a consciousness suppressant.

As a consciousness suppressant I wonder if DXM is safer than diphenhydramine. When I'm sick, being able to essentially sedate myself is honestly pretty valuable.

DXM is crappy as a consciousness suppressant. At low doses it doesn't do much. At higher doses it's likely to do the opposite: make you dissociate and hallucinate. It doesn't help you sleep.

Re: The Uselessness of Phenylephrine (2022)

#304

Post by AnthonyMouse »

lazide wrote: post #253
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't increased financing of major drug cartels a serious public safety problem? Weren't most pseudoephedrine-to-meth operations in rural areas or otherwise situated away from the general public to avoid detection?

Was Al Capone a public menace, or a businessman saving countless thousands from methanol poisoning and distilling accidents? Plenty of these stories documented either way: https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/pittsburgh/news/police-erie-boy-...

Por que no los dos?

But any "benefit" of the likes of Al Capone ended with prohibition, i.e. the thing forcing the alternatives to be methanol poisoning or mob hits.

And you wouldn't need to check ID to rate limit cold medicine if you would just check ID to rate limit what people make out of it.

Re: The Uselessness of Phenylephrine (2022)

#305

Post by paganel »

ohthehugemanate wrote: post #146
underlipton wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "fundamental problem" is the breakdown of community (drug abuse being primarily being a function of the existence or lack of interpersonal involvement and responsibilities that would preclude spending time and money on them). People who are comfortable huddling in their cars, homes, and exclusive social clubs, and who would rather spend money on cops rather than social programs, aren't going to like the fix for t…

Do you have a source for this? > drug abuse being primarily being a function of the existence or lack of interpersonal involvement and responsibilities that would preclude spending time and money on them AFAIK there have always been addicts in every culture. Alcohol, various drugs, and strongly self destructive behaviors are not recent additions to the human experience. But I don't know any if the numbers or the rese…

Not the OP, but bring back real jobs and real way of spending your time (like real family and friends) and much of the meth problem will get solved by itself.

> AFAIK there have always been addicts in every culture

Alcohol addicts are a totally different thing compared to drug addicts. You can die as a result of alcohol, but there's nothing like fentanyl in the alcohol world (I'm talking about the scale of the disaster, I know about the few alcohol intoxications here and there).

Re: The Uselessness of Phenylephrine (2022)

#306

Post by AnthonyMouse »

tptacek wrote: post #247
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only liberty being sacrificed here is showing an ID at a pharmacy counter to get Sudafed. It would be interesting to know if the people concerned about the need to show an ID to vote share that concern about the need to show an ID for access to medicine. > This particular "logbook" has existed for almost 2 decades now, and its scope hasn't creeped from there, so your second argument is pretty easy to shoot down…

You already need to show ID for most medicine! This is such a weird discussion.

> You already need to show ID for most medicine!

Do you? You have to show an insurance card to file a claim, but I imagine there is a lot of overlap between the people without ID and the people without insurance. And there appear to be free clinics that don't require ID, implying that it isn't required by law.

Re: The Uselessness of Phenylephrine (2022)

#307

Post by AnthonyMouse »

tptacek wrote: post #263
lazide wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Name an over the counter medicine you need to show ID for.

Sudafed isn't an OTC medicine; it's a BTC medicine. Most medicines aren't OTC. But there are, obviously, OTC products that require ID; for instance, every alcoholic beverage.

That's just begging the question. The only reason it's BTC is that you have to show your ID to get it.

Re: The Uselessness of Phenylephrine (2022)

#308

Post by AnthonyMouse »

tptacek wrote: post #266
natechols wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's weird to me that we've completely normalized having to present ID to buy any medicine at all, especially one that has an excellent safety and efficacy record that I was buying without an ID for a decade. Why should I have to ask the government's permission to cure a runny nose?

The problem with Sudafed isn't that it's ineffective or unsafe for its users; it's that it has the same or higher abuse potential as codeine cough drops did. We took codeine completely off the market, but you can just go buy Sudafed whenever you want.

Significant numbers of people are not going to the pharmacy and buying Sudafed because they have a cold and consequently getting addicted to Sudafed, which is what had been happening with codeine.

It's clearly because you can make methamphetamine out of it. But you can also make methamphetamine out of other things which limiting access to cold medicine demonstrably hasn't prevented.

Re: The Uselessness of Phenylephrine (2022)

#309

Post by EdwardDiego »

buildsjets wrote: post #9

The fact that phenylepherine is ineffective is quite old and has been common knowledge for many years. What is news is that the FDA is finally acknowledging it. I've maintained my own reserve of pseudoephedrine for years. https://gizmodo.com/report-many-over-the-counter-decongestan... https://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisalvo/2015/10/26/the-pop... https://www.newscientist.com/article/2089555-breaking-bad-sn...

In NZ, pseudoephedrine products were banned, and now no-one smokes methamphetamine at all! Totally worth removing an effective medicine from the market.

Haha, I am of course kidding, the meth trade is fuelling gang violence harder than ever, and it now really sucks if you get heavily congested sinuses.

When I'm travelling via Australia I try to buy as much pseudoephedrine containing medicines as I think I can bring back to NZ without looking like a smuggler, and then ration them out to family members very begrudgingly.

Meanwhile, methamphetamine is coming into the country in large quantities in shipping containers (along with illegal firearms). Banning pseudoephedrine was totally worth it...

And now something similar is occurring with cough suppressants, the ones that contained dextromethorphan, i.e., the ones that worked, turns out some people were abusing them recreationally, (DXM is a disassociative in high enough doses), so now that's gone, and we're left with pholcodine, which I find far less effective, but that too is looking likely to be banned, because apparently that's abusable too.

I'm not sure our regulators have the balance right.

Re: The Uselessness of Phenylephrine (2022)

#310

Post by salawat »

akira2501 wrote: post #82
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of us cannot make these drugs ourselves. To restrict them effectively would certainly curtail their abuse?

The presumption here is that an addict, unable to get their "favorite" drug, will now just stop doing drugs entirely. This is not the case. Drugs can also be stolen, from homes, and from pharmacies, and from ambulances. There are way more vectors than people care to ponder. If you've ever had an addict in your life, you're forced to.

In other news, the bureau of labor reports that the number of unemployed chemists have skyrocketed, and lab equipment manufacturers are reporting a surprise bump in sales.

If the mountain will not go to...

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