

Merchants of Meth: How Big Pharma Keeps the Cooks in Business - guildwriter
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/08/meth-pseudoephedrine-big-pharma-lobby

======
rob05c
Pseudoephedrine is the most effective chemical we have to alleviate flu-like
symptoms. The alternatives such as phenylephrine simply don't work.

I believe in cognitive liberty, but meth will mess you up. If I believed any
drug should be illegal, meth would be at the top of the list. But illegalizing
something for which we have no reasonable alternative is absurd.

Of course, making less destructive amphetamines legal so people don't feel the
need for meth, that's just crazy talk.

source:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenylephrine#Questions_about_e...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenylephrine#Questions_about_effectiveness)

~~~
ghouse
I don't think people are proposing making pseudoephedrine illegal. Just
slightly more difficult to obtain.

It appears that the data supports that changing the drug's status has a
positive impact on meth production. However, there was no data about how
people in Oregon or Mississippi deal with their flu-like symptoms.

~~~
rob05c
Right. But many people have neither the time nor money for prescriptions.
Especially when OTC medicines claim to work. Especially in lower income states
like Mississippi.

I grew up in rural blue-collar America. My father had health insurance through
his work, but we seldom had the money for the co-pay to see a doctor.
(anecdotal, I know)

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timr
One real problem (that this article got factually wrong) is that phenylephrine
(the 'PE' in Sudafed PE) doesn't really work. The literature goes back-and-
forth on it, but the consensus seems to be that it's only marginally more
effective than placebo. Pseudoephedrine is significantly more effective than
both (which, of course, is partly due to its close chemical relationship to
methamphetamine...funny how that works).

~~~
kens
Agreed. For entertainment, see the satirical article "A Simple and Convenient
Synthesis of Pseudoephedrine From N-Methylamphetamine" which notes the
difficulty of obtaining psudoephedrine from pharmacies and gives a simple
chemical synthesis of it from "readily available" meth.

"We expect that the simultaneous trends of restricting pseudoephedrine sales
while N-methylamphetamine becomes less expensive and of higher purity will
make the methods presented here increasingly attractive."

[http://heterodoxy.cc/meowdocs/pseudo/pseudosynth.pdf](http://heterodoxy.cc/meowdocs/pseudo/pseudosynth.pdf)

~~~
timr
_" which notes the difficulty of obtaining psudoephedrine from pharmacies and
gives a simple chemical synthesis of it from "readily available" meth"_

Ha! It certainly would be a good bit easier to put that hydroxyl group back on
than to strip it off in the first place....

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jpatokal
The article argues hard that making pseudoephedrine a prescription drug would
magically solve all this... and never once floats the idea that making
_methamphetamine itself_ a prescription drug would work much better.

Once addicts can get cheap, safe maintenance doses to feed their habit,
there's no more need for homebrew meth labs, and no more burn patients,
toddlers drinking drain cleaner, kids in foster care because their parents are
in jail, police teams in hazmat suits and all the massive costs this imposes
on society.

~~~
aheilbut
Methamphetamine is already an FDA-approved prescription drug, called Desoxyn.

~~~
rob05c
Holy mother duck! If I were roughly the size of a barge, I still wouldn't take
meth to lose weight. I think you'd be trading your mind for your body.

~~~
Malician
[http://www.rxlist.com/desoxyn-drug/warnings-
precautions.htm](http://www.rxlist.com/desoxyn-drug/warnings-precautions.htm)

"Methamphetamine should be administered at the lowest effective dosage"

"For treatment of children 6 years or older with a behavioral syndrome
characterized by moderate to severe distractibility, short attention span,
hyperactivity, emotional lability and impulsivity"

I am not opposed to the treatment of ADHD, and I understand the difference in
purity between prescription amphetamines and street drugs, and the difference
in effect from treatment dosage vs recreational use, but.. even so, it's a
little hilarious to read, given my preconceptions regarding the drug.

------
bediger4000
_Meth use as a whole, according to a 2009 RAND Corporation study, costs the
nation anywhere between $16 billion and $48 billion each year._

I call BS. Even $16 billion is totally ridiculous. According to Wikipedia,
NASA's budget was $18 billion in 2011.

This article is just a straight ahead Moral Panic, trying to polarize a
situation, and then punish some party while there's a big fog of crapaganda
around. Mother Jones should be ashamed.

And just a side note: how many Moral Panics over drugs do we have before we
just get over it?

I'm old, I can recall a late 60s moral panic about LSD - it supposedly made
you have babies with lobster claws, if you survived the mandatory dive out of
a 2nd floor window. There was an early 70s panic over heroin, and then the
Angel Dust thing in the early 80s. After that, it was Free Basing, and then
Crack. It's been Evil Meth for a while now, isn't it about time for a New Drug
to Panic over?

~~~
ljd
"I'm old, I can recall a late 60s moral panic about LSD - it supposedly made
you have babies with lobster claws, if you survived the mandatory dive out of
a 2nd floor window. There was an early 70s panic over heroin, and then the
Angel Dust thing in the early 80s. After that, it was Free Basing, and then
Crack. It's been Evil Meth for a while now, isn't it about time for a New Drug
to Panic over?"

I grew up in a very poor part of the country and this statement is ridiculous.
These drugs (save maybe LSD) are still massively destructive forces in society
that still kill people today in poor, uneducated sections of the United
States. Your statement makes it sound like people are just afraid of these
drugs because they don't understand it, but once they come around to it,
they'll see how it's not so bad.

That is an insane position on drugs.

disclosure: I'm actually for legalization but I have my eyes open about what
they do and how they destroy families and lives.

~~~
bediger4000
Sorry, I wasn't clear. It's not that the drugs are "not so bad", it's just
that the fog around something so horribly stigmatized prevents any sensible
treatment program.

The only thing society does if there's a major drug Moral Panic is to punish
the offenders severely. Putting people in prison just causes huge problems all
around, even for those not in prison. We end up with a prison-industrial
complex and a militarized police force.

Illegal drugs do indeed destroy families and lives: but prison is almost
certainly not any help for those issues. We've got AA for booze, Narcotics
Anonymous for heroin, etc etc. Those actually seem to make a difference. The
Moral Panics around particular drugs keep us from helping the people involved.

------
sxcurry
Oregonian here. Although the incidence of meth labs here in Southern Oregon
has certainly dropped, which is a good thing, I doubt the number of meth users
has changed much if at all. The meth is now coming from Mexico, much higher
quality, and a straight shot up I5.

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whyenot
If you make psuedoephedrine too difficult to get, meth cooks will start with
extracts from _Ephedra sinica_ (containing ephedrine). That may or may not be
a good thing.

~~~
rob05c
There are too many legal plants anyway؟

