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Should DayQuil Be Legal?

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Re: Should DayQuil Be Legal?

#31

Post by ryandrake »

mindslight wrote: post #10

The more general deeply-entrenched golden goose here is branding , which applies to much more than OTC medicines. Make it so the active ingredients have to be listed prominently - the largest text on the front of the product package - and these concerns diminish greatly. It would also fix the homeopathic snake oil as well, which has started showing up as options in previously-reputable medicine aisles. So at any rate…

Making the active ingredients prominent is a good start but not sufficient. As the article points out, the word "phenylephrine" looks/sounds similar enough to "pseudoephedrine" to broadly fool the population.

Re: Should DayQuil Be Legal?

#32

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

> If you walk down the cold and flu aisle at CVS and start looking closely at labels, you will count about 100 products and around six active ingredients

It's so utterly ridiculous how much space the Cold and Flu section of the medicine aisle takes for no reason at all.

And the whole thing about combining so many medications is just silly, especially the marketing for it. "Why take 3 medications for your cold symptoms when you can take just this one?" then gets countered with "Why take a cold medication that has ingredients for symptoms you don't have?"

IMO, DayQuil should never have existed simply for the reasons the article mentions: It leads to people being unaware of what they're taking. Yeah, the label is right there, but you gotta consider the lowest common denominator when selling things to the general public.

Re: Should DayQuil Be Legal?

#33

Post by ultrarunner »

ryandrake wrote: post #28
robertpateii wrote: post #8

Yeah, intentionally misleading consumers should always be at least somewhat illegal. Sure caveat emptor, but consumers having accurate information is implied and a cornerstone of a competitive market.

"Caveat Emptor" and "Do your own research" is not a basis for a functional society. Providing reading material is not a sufficient substitute for regulation in a country like the USA where 54% of adults read below a sixth-grade level. And letting marketing decide what counts as "accurate information" is just letting the fox guard the henhouse.

Counterpoint: 54% of adults read below a sixth-grade level because a society has been created to facilitate (and encourage) just that. Encouraging a population to rely on the thought processes of others is exactly what leads to over reliance on marketing.

Re: Should DayQuil Be Legal?

#34

Post by john_strinlai »

MisterTea wrote: post #16
jona-f wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Came here to say this, the author is hating on dextromethorphan like he never robotripped before. But then, overdosing dxm isn't all that healthy and I'd recommend ketamine if you want to experiment like that.

> But then, overdosing dxm isn't all that healthy and I'd recommend ketamine if you want to experiment like that. Ketamine is neurotoxic itself and can cause permanent brain damage. I can't find the info but there was someone in the tech industry who accidentally overdosed and suffered a two year bout of severe debilitating depression culminating in suicide.

>I can't find the info but there was someone in the tech industry who accidentally overdosed and suffered a two year bout of severe debilitating depression culminating in suicide.

i believe you are referring to Felix Hill.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-jBoSEVlryiX1IaSzV4vKuih...

"On mental health, psychedelics and life

This is a story about mental health, psychedelics, psychology and the mind. It is a story about the joy of family, the joy of friends, the joy of being in love, and the joy of doing scientific research. It is a story about life, the world, and how amazing they both are.

After 18 months of intolerable torture, and after many months of consideration I have decided to end my life."

Re: Should DayQuil Be Legal?

#35

Post by Aurornis »

This article uses the trick where you pick studies that support your argument and ignore all of the studies that disagree with it.

There are other studies where Dextromethorphan improves both objective and subjective measures of coughing: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37232330/

They also picked a study that shows honey outperforming Dextromethorphan but ignored all the studies that show honey performing similarly or slightly worse than Dextromethorphan, or studies where honey showed no measurable effect.

There are so many studies and papers published now that you can find both positive and negative results for just about anything. When someone starts pulling up singular random links to papers you should be suspicious. Be even more suspicious when someone is calling for bans or regulations based on those individually selected papers

Re: Should DayQuil Be Legal?

#36

Post by techbro92 »

the_sleaze_ wrote: post #18
techbro92 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the argument for legalizing drugs that are contraindicated for all medical purposes, are toxic, and have a high addictive potential? How does it benefit me or society if my neighbor is permitted to choose to basically roll the dice on afflicting themselves with a debilitating chronic illness (severe addiction)? If I don’t want to do illegal drugs why would I ant to support this?

I went to a southeast asian country and got a staph infection. I walked down to the pharmacy, asked the pharmastst for a topical and an oral antibiotic. 3 days later i was healed, continued the course the rest of the week and that was it. $12 dollars american. I got another staph infection previously in the united states. Needed to go to a doc in the box who misdiagnosed it. A few days went by and i needed to go to a…

Okay question was about drugs that are contraindicated for all medical purposes like heroin.

Also do you see any ironic connection between your two examples: easily accessible antibiotics and a medically resistant infection?

Re: Should DayQuil Be Legal?

#37

Post by butlike »

nerdsniper wrote: post #20
robobro wrote: post #4

Dextromethorphan is definitely not a placebo. Take enough and you'll go to space and meet God. Smaller doses produce euphoria and dissociation, which, even if they don't make the cough go away, makes it easier to tolerate a cold -- same reason antitussives have historically contained alcohol, cannabis extract (which may incidentally work as bronchodilator but was not the reason I imagine it was in antitussives) Funny…

The left enantiomer of methamphetamine (exact same chemical formula and structure, just mirror symmetry) is also an OTC decongestant.

Vicks

Re: Should DayQuil Be Legal?

#38

Post by icodestuff »

I only know one person who has ever found phenylephrine effective. It's definitely not for me, but they've done single-blinded self-studies (with help) to see if it's a placebo effect, and it's pretty clearly not.

DXM is also not a placebo, although it might be specifically for cough.

I don't especially want the FDA to ban them, but requiring separating out the acetaminophen might not be the worst idea.

Re: Should DayQuil Be Legal?

#39

Post by bityard »

I just can't get super upset about this. Sure, OTC companies are duping customers with marketing, but what's new about that? As the person holding the money, it's my job to look at what is effective and what the active ingredients are in any given product. Or ask my doctor/nurse/pharmacist what to do, if I can't be bothered to make the effort myself.

When I want to get irrationally angry about something in a department store, I'll walk over to the shampoos, which for some reason always have a whole entire aisle dedicated to a single product, when they all do literally the same exact thing, just with different scents and advertising budgets baked into the sticker price.

Re: Should DayQuil Be Legal?

#40

Post by vlovich123 »

Aurornis wrote: post #35

This article uses the trick where you pick studies that support your argument and ignore all of the studies that disagree with it. There are other studies where Dextromethorphan improves both objective and subjective measures of coughing: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37232330/ They also picked a study that shows honey outperforming Dextromethorphan but ignored all the studies that show honey performing similarly o…

> There are so many studies and papers published now that you can find both positive and negative results for just about anything.

Doesn’t that suggest that the effect overall is neutral?

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