CVS ditches common cold meds after FDA advisers say they're useless
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Re: CVS ditches common cold meds after FDA advisers say they're useless
#2Wishful thinking, but next up should be homeopathic snake-oil.
No company should have a homeopathic product sitting on the shelf next to an actual medicine.
Re: CVS ditches common cold meds after FDA advisers say they're useless
#3But they leave the homeopathic junk mixed in as if it was actual medicine.
Re: CVS ditches common cold meds after FDA advisers say they're useless
#4I'm more surprised Sudafed was shown as an OTC. Isn't that one of the ingredients in meth? Not really the subject of the article but it struck me as odd.
Re: CVS ditches common cold meds after FDA advisers say they're useless
#5I'm more surprised Sudafed was shown as an OTC. Isn't that one of the ingredients in meth? Not really the subject of the article but it struck me as odd.
Not real Sudafed. Real Sudafed isn’t OTC because it is pseudoephedrine—in fact that’s where Sudafed got its name.
Re: CVS ditches common cold meds after FDA advisers say they're useless
#6I'm more surprised Sudafed was shown as an OTC. Isn't that one of the ingredients in meth? Not really the subject of the article but it struck me as odd.
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Re: CVS ditches common cold meds after FDA advisers say they're useless
#7I'm more surprised Sudafed was shown as an OTC. Isn't that one of the ingredients in meth? Not really the subject of the article but it struck me as odd.
Sudafed (edit: also) makes (or at least made) products with phenylephrine, the useless drug in question. Those products don't contain pseudoephedrine, which can indeed be used as a precursor to making meth.
Edit: I did not say that Sudafed did not also make products containing pseudoephedrine. They do, obviously, it's where their name comes from. They just also make products with useless phenylephrine.
Re: CVS ditches common cold meds after FDA advisers say they're useless
#8And this means we're going to have an easier time buying the stuff that works...right?
...right?
Re: CVS ditches common cold meds after FDA advisers say they're useless
#9Re: CVS ditches common cold meds after FDA advisers say they're useless
#10I'm more surprised Sudafed was shown as an OTC. Isn't that one of the ingredients in meth? Not really the subject of the article but it struck me as odd.
> Isn't that one of the ingredients in meth?
Not an ingredient -- a precursor. Methamphetamine, pseudoephedrine and and phenylephrine are very closely related:
https://cen.acs.org/content/dam/cen/83/13/8313govpol1imgs.gi...
To convert pseudoephedrine to meth you have to remove a hydroxyl (-OH) group in a way that leaves the resulting molecule in a specific isomer. Doing this at high yield is challenging, but it turns out that if you're willing to live with lots of horrible impurities, you can do it in a cola bottle. PE has the same structure as pseudoephedrine, but in a different isomer, so it cannot be converted with the simple approaches.
Unfortunately, PE is also useless for decongestion, because -- surprise! -- the isomer matters a lot for effectiveness.