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?
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.........
Anyone notice that the shortage of adderall and the rise of the TEA party happened about the same time?
Coincidence? I think not ....
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).
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.
Every single person I've met (which are dozens) that regularly takes Adderall clearly does not "need" it to function, but they may think they do and exhibit classic signs of addiction.
However, medicines like this fit into most medical/social science methodology in that, if someone starts taking Adderall, of course they are more productive and may even feel better (e.g. euphoria) etc, so measuring those effects usually produces positive results.
Interceding variables like having doctors prescribing amphetamine salts like candy seem to be ignored in these methodologies.
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.
The dea and war on drugs has only been around for about 90 years and has caused nothing but problems. by your own reasoning we should go back to a state where the governents don't try to dictate what we should and should not consume. Seems reasonable to me, I would like ot have juridstiction over my own body! I mean seriously, next they'll be telling us we can't consume milk if it doesn't come from a farm that homogenizes the milk.
In general, they were labeled "troublemakers", "bullies", "class clowns" or any other of a number of meaningless epithets that did nothing to help them get ahead and allowed them to just play their role in society before becoming some blue-collar laborer or small time criminal.
Yes, everyone you've met on Adderall (that you know of...) are addicted to it. Everyone I've met on Adderall can fly like Superman. What does anecdotal evidence (especially that which is uncited) have to do with it again?
The DEA had nothing to do with Fast-n-Furious - that was the BATFE (which should be a convienence store not a government agency)
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
Yes, they just didn't function. Kinda like before antibiotics, people with serious infections just died.
Sure, there are abuses, and it's over-prescribed. However, there are people who actually do need it to function well and they should be able to get it. The DEA needs to butt out of medical practice.
Your personal anecdotes may be well founded. However, I have a personal anecdote too. I have a child who is on Addreall and I can attest to how much better it makes him function. Since the last 2 years of taking it, he has made leaps and bounds in his ability to speak and articulate thoughts. Without the drug, he reverts to extremely erratic behavior, his speech suffers, and sometimes he unintentionally hurts himself. Recently, the Adderall shortage caught us off guard once, and we had a fairly wild weekend with him (not the only time actually). So yes, he is a clear case of where the drug works as intended.
That people abuse this drug upsets me to no end. I'm reminded of it every time I have to go through the prescription refill process.
For the record, I'm not one of the parents that would dose up their kid just to get him to sit still and be quiet. Far from it. I'm certain without it, he'd be held back or in a special needs school.
Hecubas
Here is the link for you. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/feb/13/feds-shut-down-amish-farm-selling-fresh-milk/
I don't think anyone disagrees that there are cases where it actually does help and is needed. What people are saying is that its use is too widespread and most of the children on it just need parenting and discipline. Your child may well be one of those who do actually need it. The question is how do you discern one group from the other and prevent those who don't need it from being placed on it.
What you DON'T do is give that decision to a governmental agency that has a narrow focus on just saying no. While there are legitimate social and medical arguments for and against amphetamine (and other drug) use, letting the DEA essentially control it is a very, very bad way to go.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Yeah, well, it's not that they need it to function DISCLAIMER (I am presently on a similar medication), it's that they need it to function in the highly structured, monotonous "farmer" style society that we find ourselves. If there was a way for many of these people (and many people with ADD do fine without meds) to make a living that didn't rely on organization, attention to detail, etc., then we wouldn't need the meds. I myself am trying to transition myself away from my concerta-requiring job and into a non-concerta-requiring job as we speak.
As far as addiction goes, what of it? People are addicted, physically addicted, to coffee, and other substances all the time. It's not the addiction but the psycho-physico-emotional harm that it might do that is the problem. No one worries that people with bipolar disorder are "addicted" to their meds.
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.
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."