Summary
The FDA has proposed phasing out oral phenylephrine, a common decongestant in cold medicines like Sudafed PE and DayQuil, after studies showed it is no more effective than a placebo.
The drug, ineffective when swallowed due to breakdown in the stomach, remains usable in nasal sprays.
Alternatives include pseudoephedrine, nasal sprays, and steroid treatments like Flonase.
The regulatory process to remove phenylephrine could take over a year, but experts argue removing ineffective options will help consumers choose better remedies for congestion. Drugmakers are expected to challenge the proposal.
The problem is that it is legally an evil drug because you can make meth from it, so it remains heavily restricted. There are more effective ways to make meth at commercial scale than by buying and crushing up cold and flu tablets, but it’s a question of moral principle, i.e. not condoning evil.
This is some dumb pearl clutching bullshit.
With this asinine logic, buying apples are condoning evil because their seeds contain cyanide and though there are more effective ways to create cyanide at commercial scale than buying apples and extracting the small amount of cyanide from the seeds it’s still a question of moral principle i.e not condoning evil.
What’s even bigger bullshit is that you can simply buy Benzedrine from the nasal decongestant aisle instead, remove the cotton wick and soak it in an acid (like lemon juice), and in 24 hours you have the same kind of meth they gave the Nazis. For four dollars. It’s literally just sitting there on the shelf for anyone to buy.
Everything in life is made up and none of the points matter.
RemindMe! -1 day
Not sold in the US, if you’re in the US and interested in chemistry.
Yeah, but people are actually making meth from pseudoephedrine and no one is making cyanide from apples.
And yes, I hate having to go inside to buy it as I use it nearly every day.
i’m sure glad nobody uses guns for the wrong reason! if they were you might have to start restricting their sale too aye?!?
You use cyanide every day?
Usually in combination with happiness.
Unless it’s the depression week.
It’s not that hard. The only real issue is when the pharmacy is closed and you’re trying to buy one a holiday or after-hours. I just keep some spare pseudoephedrine in the medicine cabinet to hold me over until the pharmacy opens.
They spend more money and chemistry making pseudoephedrine hard to make into meth then they do on the everything else in the medicine. It’s also why meth labs tend to blow up when they didn’t with with standard pseudoephedrine.
Interesting. Do you know of any articles on the topic?
Look up “Impede technology”. There are newer methods now but that’s an example.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0731708517331904