Slashdot Mirror
Aderall Or Nothing: Anatomy of the Great Amphetamine Drought
pigrabbitbear writes "To prevent hoarding of materials and their potential for theft and illicit use, the Drug Enforcement Agency sets quotas for the chemical precursors to drugs like Adderall. The DEA projects the need for amphetamine salts, then produces and distributes the materials to pharmaceutical companies so that they can produce their drugs. But with the number of prescriptions for Adderall jumping 13 percent in the past year, pharmaceutical companies claim that the quotas are no longer sufficient for supplying Americans with their Adderall. The DEA contends that their quotas do, in fact, meet demands, and that any shortages arise from pharmaceutical companies selectively producing only certain, typically name-brand and more expensive versions of ADHD medications."
Is there no enterprise you can't utterly fuck up?
I don't have a problem with this at all.
Perhaps we should have this dept dissolved.
At the very least, can we start a movement to find constitutional justification for such a Federal Agency?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
It would not be wise for the DEA to further piss off potentially millions of amphetamine addicts.
Anyone notice that the shortage of adderall and the rise of the TEA party happened about the same time?
Coincidence? I think not ....
that corporations love to be "selective" to squeeze out what they can. I don't necessarily agree with the govt rational for rationing but at least someone in the DEA does have some understanding of business.
I can also hope that maybe ....just maybe some kids will just be kids for a bit longer because of this....
Can officially label America the "Home of the drugged" yet?
You are taking the wrong pills. Please only take the pills we want you to.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
15 TONS of crank turned up last week in what may be the largest bust ever.
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/02/09/mexican-army-finds-15-tons-pure-methamphetamine/
As a side note, Adderall is HIGHLY over-prescribed. Most kids are hyper and have short attention spans - it's part of being a kid.
With our drugs...
You'll be sorry.
FWIW, I was a pharmacy tech while working through HS and college, and the entire time, we never had such bad problems with backorders on any product (with the possible exception of when albuterol inhalers were required to switch to CFA free, another massive screwup).
so that we can track their killing sprees, but not let enough medication be produced for law abiding citizens. Smart move.
I doubt the DEA has a lab somewhere that's creating this material... or maybe they do...
When did the DEA get into the chemical production business?
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
The DEA imposes an artificial scarcity on a chemical, and the drug companies crank that though their models to maximize profit. What's the surprise here? That the DEA doesn't have any non-partisan economists on staff?
Yes, the total amount of the raw material might be enough for the demand, but people have been making fortunes profiting from local shortages since, like, forever.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
It looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.
I am officially gone from
Legalize and Tax. No more war on drugs.
I'm 48, and I don't use any recreational drugs (including alcohol). But I've long held that legalizing and simply taxing all drugs would eliminate far more problems than drugs currently cause.
Drug dealers? No need. Buy what you want at the local pharmacy. Made by real labs, with quality control standards. Warning label on the bottle: "This drug may kill you. Use at your own risk." No illegal pipeline if what you can buy at CVS is cheaper and better quality than from the guy on the street. How much of organized crime is based on the drug trade? From import to manufacturing to distribution to people stealing crap to feed their habit?
Dirty Needles? Nope. Buy those when you are picking up your consumer grade heroin. There go HIV and HEP-C transmission rates.
Drug addicts? Use the previously mentioned tax money on education and rehab programs. Even a hefty tax on the drugs would still leave them at a lower cost than street drugs.
Never happen. There are too many vested interests in keeping the "war on drugs" alive.
How much suffering is the DEA willing to inflict for the, pardon the metaphor, pipe dream of a drug-free America?
You can't swing a dead cat without hearing about under-medicating pain and how that one of the primary drivers of that is physician fear of a DEA investigation or worse, losing their license to prescribe.
Now it's this -- and while I'm sure there's some pharma holdback for brand-name drugs, that wouldn't matter if the DEA wasn't so restrictive of the chemistry.
So now we have another group of people at minimum inconvenienced at at maximum with negative health consequences because of the relentless pursuit of an unobtainable moral goal.
Thanks, DEA.
We need to legalize ALL currently illegal recreational drugs in the USA, but put them under tight regs. In addition, we need to allow ZERO IMPORTS OR EXPORTS on these. Likewise, require that all of the precursors be manufactured here as well. Why? Because it destroys gangs and drug lords the world over. Once this is done, then illegal activities will stop. As to the drug use, it will remain. However, it will not be pushed.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Command economies fail because they cannot respond effectively to unpredicted shifts in demand. You'd think people would know this by now ever since the command economy of the Soviet Union publicly imploded.
Wow, tough call who to side with on this one - The pharmaceutical companies that would rather let women miscarry and kids die of leukemia than leave any money on the table; Or the government agency that would rather watch cancer victims die in agony and puking their guts out than let them toke up.
Can we just line both sides up against the wall, as a lesson to whomever we allow to replace them?
I find it humorous when the "government" does planning and tells us what is going on. It sounds like a weird form of centralized planning from the Soviet Union. Soon the FDA will regulate toilet paper! lol.
We are really in a fucked up country!
{ See the movie Up! if you're confused. }
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
. . . and back into its children, where it belongs!
Are other countries in the world meth-ing up their children? Or is this like a US only type thing?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
The next few generations will be a breed of zombies!
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
Do you far less damage than most government sanctioned recreational drugs and many medically sanction treatments.
How about you don't tax it, or tax it proportionally to social and personal harm.
There's good evidence that all these "attention-deficit" drugs are only of real benefit for a few weeks, after which continued use only makes sense for avoiding the sometimes-serious withdrawal symptoms. In other words, while use of aphetamines for ADD appeared to make medical sense once upon a time, more recent research shows that they whole thing is a bit of a fraud being run for the profit of the drug companies, with no net contribution at all to public well-being, or student performance, or anything else beyond maintaining a large, profitable population of addicts. Sure if you stop taking it you feel worse for a while, and if you start again you feel better. That's what addiction is.
If you're an adult taking them yourself, make your own judgment. If you're cooperating with a school in dosing your kid though, seriously consider setting a time and place for the kid to go cold turkey. You're doing nobody a real favor by keeping your kid on speed.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
This is the first year they are "rationed" with a lottery, because they having been reaching the BLM quotas the last two years. But no one seems to be able to get one. The scalper community went after them.
For some reason this reminds me of Breaking Bad. The locals are having a hard time buying precursors at pharmacies because the regs have made them scarce, but in walks "Heisenberg" and he starts cranking out the stuff by the barrel using industrial equipment.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
The only reason this is a so-called disease is because Big Pharma makes tons of money on trying to medicate the children of America. What if this was not a "disability" but actually just the next step in evolution of human beings? What if there is actually nothing wrong at all? I believe ADHD isn't a malady.
so the pharm companies are wanting to push out as much pills as possible so that they can still make a profit off this wonder drug. The generics/alternatives to adderall suck and have much worse symptoms than the namebrand drug.
The quota the DEA set is within the limits. The only abuse of this drug is in college campuses and has been since it came out. Of course, you can develop a habit for this pill because it can make you dependent on it rather than letting your brain produce the hormones you otherwise normally would produce...
But again, the companies are deliberately limiting supply to drive up costs and if the DEA gives in (via political pressure), then the pharm companies will still charge a large amount for the drug as the patent on it will get extended for another 10 years.
Only in the US are totally safe "drugs" illegal and use and possession are punishable by life in prison, but dangerous drugs are completely and totally legal.
I don't respond to AC's.
I have worked with them. This is an agency the American people would be better off without. Just fire the employees and delete the DEA. Problem solved.
What what the post/TFA about? I couldn't get my script filled and wasn't paying attention.
Silence is a state of mime.
If I have to jump through hoops to prove I'm not planning on using my decongestant to make Meth, I'm glad the drug companies have to deal with this garbage too.
When did the DEA get into the chemical production business?
If accurate, I would wager right about the time they made it illegal for anyone else to do so.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Obooboo the Messiah! Your tax dollars at work!
Most ADHD meds are scam, they only cause addiction and don't help.
LSD is real ADHD med that works. Other serotonin 5HT2A agonists make sense too.
There is NO mentall illnesses.
The shortages are artificial and caused by its components being illegal to manufacture by anyone except the government.
It's not just a central planning problem, like having the Agriculture Department subsidizing ethanol production or the CDC guessing wrong about what kind of flu vaccine we need some years. It's mostly a political correctness problem, with the DEA trying to interfere with people using a popular type of drug (as a followon to their War on Cold Medicine that makes us have to use fake sudafed instead of the real stuff.)
What? You're one of those Republicans who thinks "Political Correctness" is a only _Liberal_ problem? Wrong...
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I think Aderall was the prescription that I could not get while I was in Japan, in fact it was illegal and I could have gotten in trouble if they'd searched my bag at the airport and found it.
I got a prescription to J-Zoloft while in Japan for an extended time.
Beware those who travel overseas.
As long as the manufacturer can document that the quantity of legitimate drugs shipped match their use of amphetamine salts, what is the point of quotas? Why is the DEA involved at all in projecting and limiting the amount of any prescription drug?
If there's a problem with amphetamine salt derived drugs being overprescribed, that sounds like a problem for the FDA, not the DEA.
If there's a problem with the theft of amphetamine derived drugs, that problem will exist regardless of any quotas.
If there's a problem with theft of the amphetamine salts from manufacturers storerooms, then set high fines for loss of any material that's not accounted for in sales of legitimate drugs, making sure they will use appropriate security.
What benefit is there for restricting the amphetamine salts sales to drug manufacturers other than to drive up prices by causing false scarcity?
act of god is a legal term, irrespective of one's belief in a deity.
If memory serves, the French-derived term force majeure indicates basically the same thing, only without the religious overtones.
Ah, yes, apparently force majeure is a superset of act of god. FWIW.
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
They are my anti-drug. $7 a bottle for a month's supply, $30 if you want the ultra pure phsophyldatylcholine extract from Vitamin World, and both work as well or better than prescription drugs for ADHD. But because they can't make billions of dollars off a waste product of the soy industry, they're not interested in funding further studies on it. The only side effect I've ever encountered is having a particularly large one get stuck in my throat...
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
The current methotrexate (chemo drug for children) shortage is due to suppliers opting to make more expensive drugs on their manufacturing equipment. For some reason, the free market isn't working to keep supplying methotrexate, or numerous other generics. Just google "drug shortage" for over 100 examples.
Shorts legit US customers and gives the Mexican cartels a better market because they get their precursors from foreign markets.
Surprised how post there were on this topic, ADD much /. readers?
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Well, hopefully they all die. That way demand will dry up.
The crowd at a Republican debate cheered this approach for uninsured sick people in need of health care.
Well, one or two people in the crowd, but even at that I agree that was still a WTF?! moment.
I found it to be not a "WTF" moment, and instead more a "wow, they're being really honest about their 'fuck everyone else' attitude..."
I'm no fan of either of the major political parties in the US -- both appear to be full of unprincipled mercenaries perfectly happy to sell the country down the shitter for the right price. That said, the Republican party seems much more the party of bald-faced sociopaths, actively courting like-minded authoritarians, selling the theme of anti-social, anti-public policy, and cultivating and capitalizing upon their audience's near-complete lack of cognitive dissonance. "I've got mine; screw you!" could well be their rallying cry.
As widely reported in the US media, such as the NY Times article, "Even Critics of Safety Net Increasingly Depend on It", the common people self-identifying as Republican are very often the very people being hurt by the espoused Republican approach to policy. More disturbingly, they've been so successfully hoodwinked that these very people have absorbed the Republican talking points about dismantling the very systems that keep themselves afloat, and happily parrot them back to anyone that asks.
That's some masterful propagandizing. I doff my cap, I really do.
So then having even a few people in a crowd, let alone a whole room, cheering for the idea that all those sick people will die off and thereby "solve" the problem of healthcare, that's just more evidence of how successful the pro-corporate, pro-wealth, anti-public idea machine has been.
All this really just helps the rest of us still capable of more rational thought to see the signs of where this might go. And it's not a pretty outlook.
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
The real question is, why are we allowing our government to waste even more of our tax dollars on this? Yes there should be a body that steps in if the distribution of class 3 drugs begins to see a rise in illegal distribution but not limit the quantity the pharam-co's are allowed to produce. That's just silly.
Yes, there are issues with ADHD drugs being overprescribed when the issues is kids acting like kids instead of well-behaved robots (especially boys), but kids are more likely to get Ritalin; Adderall users are more likely to be college students or young working adults.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
They're manufacturing plenty of antipsychotics so the people who miss the functional enhancement of their amphetamines can instead enjoy a state of not caring about anything at all
Chemical compound shortage on an otherwise illicit drug, that helps people concentrate due to media over-stimulation, but is massively over-prescribed.
If this isn't the monkey fucking the football, nothing is!
Who still takes Adderall? Gogo vyvanse.
Provigil or Nuvigil - Anti Narcoleptic non-amphetamine... All the awake without the shakes!
Just expensive as hell $10-$20 USD per pill.
...meth is cheaper and easier to get than ever.
More and more people are taking it for weight loss. Americans are fat and we need a miracle diet pill. Never mind if it makes us act insane.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
You've nailed it on the head. ADHD only exists when those behaviors are called symptoms and then your kids are put in a box everyday to learn and they bounce around. The education system and helicopter parenting is the problem, NOT the kids. It's criminal to give kids these drugs. It's criminal to invent and market these diseases to the masses. It's criminal that it's backed by the FDA.
It's total BS. The behaviors they are exhibiting are natural and not a disease. Bad parenting or good evolution explain both -- these behaviors have not been an issue before every aspect of a child's upbringing began being analyzed and controlled. Kids have energy, kids are sponges who's attention bounces from place to place because that is how they learn. It used to be that kids came home and went out in the field or forest behind their house and played for hours on end until it was dark and they had to come home -- and which point they were tired and spent -- homework could then happen, maybe even a couple of simple chores.
and could solve some of the budget problems at the same time.
Tell these companies that they can
1 start churning out the generics to ensure the supply
or
2 start paying truly epic fines
or
3 find that they are no longer certified to produce ANY drugs (and they are cut off from the supply of precursors)
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
Imagine living in a fog of confusion and insatiable restlessness, unable to follow a coherent train of thought or feel any satisfaction from the activities that make you happy, and as a result, failing at everything you do, despite having the skill and ambition; does that sound like fun to you?
Worst of all is having to put up with mouthbreathing twats who dismiss the condition responsible for ruining your life as a 'fake' disease, despite knowing sweet fuck all about it (reading wacky conspiracy theories about 'big pharma' doesn't make you an expert in neuropsychiatry, sorry).
I didn't get my diagnosis until adulthood, at which point the damage had been done, so don't think for a second that it's 'all in my head' or that I'm using it as an excuse for being 'lazy' (I wish it was just laziness). Despite it's reputation as a 'happy fun hyperactivity WOO SPEED' label slapped on badly behaved kids, ADHD is a very real, very debilitating condition (or to be precise, a manifestation of several neurological conditions that result in specific dopaminergic dysfunctions); pure suffering.
If taking stimulants (which, by the way, are the only class of drug available on prescription to have any effect on the only well-studied common neurological mechanisms associated with ADHD) to make my life bearable enough that I don't feel like ending it makes me a 'big pharma slave', so be it.
Ultimitely working for what you get is better for the human spirit than handouts. And there really is a trade off between the amount of handouts and the difficulty of self-sufficiency. But it's easier to just accuse people of greed and meanness than think things through, I guess.
It sounds like you're trying to put words in my mouth. At the bare minimum, you seem to have understood my post to mean "Free handouts for everybody, permanently!" That's not my point.
My point in my previous post is that the Republican party espouses certain policy goals that have been harmful to the working poor, and the party's strategists have been very successful in selling an emotional ideal of independent, belligerent, strike-it-rich boot-strapping to many of these working poor, such that they pledge their support of Republican policy even as it destroys their livelihoods. I've watched this dynamic play out for decades, and it fascinates and worries me.
In response to your post here, I quite agree with your initial statement, that working for something is generally the better option for an individual's psychological well-being. This is borne out in my own experience and from others that I've known, where people who have had to work for things in their lives tend to have a more grounded sense of worth, be hard workers, and strive to succeed; whereas people who have had things just given to them tend to not appreciate what they have, be listless, and avoid striving if possible. Of course, this is a gross generalization, it's just my own observation, YMMV, and all that.
However, cutting off social safety net funding is not a very effective way to help people work for their keep, especially when the jobs just aren't there, and instead will do much more to destabilize society and hurt people already down on their luck. And that's just a recipe for misery and violence.
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Right on. I could easily get a ADHD -diagnose if I wanted to, it's just made up words to keep those bright young minds under medication and ultimately, under control. Addicted, hooked to the medical system.
ADHD is an inventend syndrome. Something to sell more Big Pharma Drugs to our kids, or more precisely, adults who think that their children need this. If kids were really told about what these so-called ADHD -drugs do to their system, they would use their Common Sense (kids still have it) and determine that this is toxic to their system.
This is why it's called ADHD. So we'll get confused what is happening. Oh, it's ADHD! Yeah, my kid has that too. Oh, your kid is not listening to the lies they are being showed down their throats in school? Give them some Adderal!
And at the same time we are forgetting wtf we are doing, giving kids highly addictive and behaviour changing drugs. Imagine if you had been growing up while taking amphetamine every day ? What kind human would you grow up to be? What kind of psychological reactions are forming in these kids bodies and minds as they are growing up while being under the influence of this stuff?
Putting amphetamines on these young kids bodies will get them concentrated, sure. It's goddamn amphetamine. Amphetamine is used to keep soldiers awake and functioning as machines of war. Hitler used to get shots of amphetamine in his eye given by his medical staff everyday. Amphetamine is what fueled the Finnish Army during the cold war. It's goddamn amphetamine! Nothing to play around with, really.
This performance driven, money-overcomes-everything society wants to produce happy little worker drones, who are ready and willing to work those 60-80 hour weeks, no questions asked. Adderal and other psyche altering drugs are the tools for keeping us concentrated, sedated, happy little numb people that we are. Feeling depressed? Here, take this! Bing, no emotions, you are a Robot, ready to go to work 5 days a week.
Is anyone asking what side-effects this stuff has ? Blocking of emotions ? Rail-driven thinking ? Not seeing the big picture, focusing on little things ?
Kids shouldn't need any psyche-altering medications to begin with. What they need is just some love and care.
GeoKone.NET
1:Ability to make choices
2:Perfect knowledge so you can make those choices
3:Acting rationally so you can take avantage of 1 and 2
That whole free market thing is a theoretical model anyway since no real market really has those 3 properties.(Kind of like how the ideal gas law is a good model and it's kind of close but if your real gas deviates a lot from the ideal one the ideal gas model won't work too well.)
But personally, I don't like the idea of being an enabler of such behavior as we watch people destroy their own lives and that of their children through neglect.
But you are cool with telling other people how to live their lives, because you know what is best for them, I see.
I have never used drugs. I don't even like taking aspirin. I don't drink coffee or smoke and I rarely drink alcohol. But you know what? I am totally for decriminalization of drugs, because I believe that people should be allowed to make their own choices about how they live their lives. I know I am not wise enough of a person to be able tell people how to live their lives, and be correct. Part of living in a free country is allowing others to do things that we don't find to be appealing. You are failing to respect that other people might know what is best for themselves and govern their own lives.
Conservative, N - A concerned hypocrite who doesn't want government to interfere with their lives. They want the government to interfere with everyone else's.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
"What did people do before Adderall then, simply not function? It's only been around for around 30 years."
Please. People who were depressed killed themselves, as they still do in places where they are ostracised and not helped. Schizophrenics and people with other disorders were tied up. Without these drugs, it took me over seven years to complete a three year university degree, despite always scoring in the top 1-4% of the test takers (not even general population) in every aptitude test I have ever taken. I have never taken a dose higher than what's prescribed by my doctor, I often skip one or two of the three prescribed doses because if I take it too late in the day it messes up my sleep cycle. I still 'function' without it, except I get fired from the jobs I do extremely well with the drug, I write, I read more, and generally make more of a contribution to society. I don't commit any crimes, hurt anyone, abuse the drug, show any sociopathic behaviour or generally do anything that would classify me as mentally unstable a danger to society or anyone. I need those drugs to function the way I want and I make a better contribution to society as a result, we don't end up in rehab at public cost. Many of us diagnosed ourselves because we got little help fromthe medical system. I understand high doses of these drugs can be used as party drugs, well so can opioids from what I know, and I don't hear anyone asking for people in hospital to be left without morphine.
Please leave me alone, and especially ADHD adults alone. We need these drugs, and it has no effect on anyone else. It is darn near impossible to explain this condition to anyone not willing to spend days listening, reading and understanding. Most of the time it's not worth trying. So just, let us take our medication, and leave us alone. There are only a few countries in the world these drugs are available, one reason I don't want to go back to my home country. Some countries, even developed countries like Japan do not allow you to bring even a prescription bottle of these medications in. So I can't even go on a short work assignment to Japan without being forced to perform much below my potential. An alternate drug, Methylphenidate (Ritalin etc) which is available in more countries produces awful side effects in me and many others.
Anyone interested in understanding the condition, don't read wikipedia, don't read the DSM summary. That will just make you say that everyone has those problems. Don't read any website, not even usually reliable medical websites. Maybe a few journal papers. Then read more than one of the books written by practitioners who have spent decades working with ADHD, because they are among the very few, even in their own profession, who have any understanding of adult ADHD.
http://www.amazon.com/Delivered-Distraction-Getting-Attention-Disorder/dp/034544230X/ref=cm_lmf_tit_3/175-5015545-0743120
http://www.amazon.com/Stupid-Self-Help-Attention-Deficit-Disorder/dp/0684815311/ref=cm_lmf_tit_8/175-5015545-0743120
http://www.amazon.com/Driven-Distraction-Recognizing-Attention-Childhood/dp/0684801280/ref=cm_lmf_tit_9/175-5015545-0743120
If you have ADHD, does smoking a cigarette allow you to focus?
Back in the day, if you had to stay up all night you would just smoke and drink coffee. I never quite knew whether the coffee kept you up while the nicotine was just there to control the jitters, or whether the nicotine was also helping you focus. Or maybe just taking away the pain of being up at 4am.
But there may be something to that, since cigarettes also function as an appetite suppressant.
I'm not advocating smoking over amphetamines, just curious whether conflicting social policies are at play here (smoking is bad, adderall use is up).