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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?
Both are positively correlated with time! Obviously time is to blame, and if we can stop it, we will stop both problems.
Or just a person at an 8th grade reading level who read the US Constitution.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
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).
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.
The DEA does do a lot of important things. As a pharmacy tech, we often worked with the DEA to put a stop to both customers passing phoney prescriptions, and doctors giving massive prescriptions for controlled substances to anyone. However, forcing low stock doesn't help any of this. CII substances are kept under active inventory. Every supplier and every pharmacy must know--to the exact pill--how much stock they have. All CII prescriptions are double counted. If some stupid pharmacy tech starts swiping pills, it gets noticed, quickly. The only benefit for keeping stock low is financial. Since comparatively, generic adderall isn't even very expensive, I can see no reason why it, among so many other things should be the scape goat for this.
Who said anything about an important regulatory agency? We're talking about the DEA.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
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.
I couldn't agree with you more, the DEA is nothing more than red tape.
As a person who takes Adderall (20mg x 2 daily) daily, this shortage has made my life a living hell. Before refilling my prescription, I have to call around to all of the local drug stores to see who has Adderall in stock and if not, when it will be in. The negative part here is the doctor can't give me my monthly prescription until a few days before I am required a refill. So once I get my prescription, all I can do is hope that I can find a place that can get it filled before I run out.
Adderall is classified in the same drug schedule as Cocaine, Opium, Morphine, Oxycodone and Methadone. I've seen tons of crap online about people becoming addicted to Adderall which honestly I believe is all bullshit. I can take my Adderall during the week and stop over the weekend without craving it. The only negative effect of doing this is I end up playing xbox all weekend and nothing gets done around the house.
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
Please step down from your pedestal. We already have the FDA. We don't need the FDA *AND* the DEA regulating our drug use. We already have the FBI (if you want something federal) and the state police (if you want something state), and/or local police (if you want something county/city/unincorporated) to do the actual enforcement.
But what about stopping drugs before they enter our country?
We have boarder patrol, coast guard, and relationships with foreign governments.
get off my lawn?
-g
DO you have any idea how much I don't want to be a Ron Paul Supporter. I mean... the gold standard? Seriously?
Or the whole not using the bathroom of homosexuals thing.... or his statements on abortion but... in the end... hes the only one saying anything sane on drug policy, which is a bigger issue than all of them. He is the only one who says anything sane about wars, and how silly it is that we keep having them.
I so don't want to support that crazy old coot but.... when he is the most sane one out there....
Well thats scary.... but it doesn't make him less right on this issue. The DEA makes no sense. We have ample evidence that amphetamine use is not terribly harmful and its addiction can be managed and even beneficial for many people. Similarly to coffee.
Look at all the problems with meth addiction and...please....show me them before its prohibition. Meth was around for a LONG TIME. Meth addiction in this climate of expensive drugs and addicts being driven underground sucks for the addicts, and sucks for everyone else who has to deal with the results. All problems that didn't exist before prohibition.... when it was mostly regulated by doctors and use was above board.
Congress and their DEA lap dogs made every problem that they touched worst. They made the lives of addicts worst, they made the supply more dangerous, they drove people to do business with violent criminals, and created an atmosphere for violent criminal gangs to thrive. Its THEIR FAULT WE ARE IN THIS MESS!
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Well if it wasn't for the DEA, those customers wouldn't need to pass phoney prescriptions, nor would doctors give out massive ones. In a climate where drug use can be above board and people can be honest, its not clear that any of the real problems with meth, or any other drugs, are actually major issues....and even less evidence that prohibition and regulation to stop drug use does anything positive.
Generally the DEA has created a climate where violent gangs thrive, legitimate patients are often under medicated for pain (do you have any idea how many people will spend the rest of their lives in daily chronic pain for no other reason than their doctor can't give them heroin? or high enough levels of other pain meds?) and desperate people are preyed upon.
The alternative? Some doctors give some drugs to addicts? Oh my god what a horror! Above board drug use? Where it can be monitored and people can seek out help without stigma? Oh no! How terrible!
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
The DEA does do a lot of important things
I know, right..
Yes, this is one agency that America really needs to keep around.
Palm trees and 8
the down-the road consequences of losing a paramilitary force that kills with impunity, siezes civilian property to fund its operations, operates inside of and outside of US borders, has more signals intelligence capability than the intelligence services of most nations, and which both creates and enforces drug possession laws without any democratic process.
FTFY
Palm trees and 8
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."