Why don't they just take Sudafed off the market?

Post Reply New Topic

This is what I do not understand. Crystal meth is an illegal drug. It is easily made at home, by anybody who has watched someone else do it a few times. The ingredients are cheap. A hundered dollars can make a lot of it. You cannot make crystal meth cheaply or easily without Sudafed (pseudoephedrine). Sudafed is one of many decongestants on the market and although it works the best for some people, it isn't the only option.

With all this "war on drugs", why don't they do the simple thing and just take Sudafed off the market? Make it prescription instead. Doctors could give it to people when nothing else works for them, but make it rarely prescribed. It's one of the drugs you sign for now, but all that does is allow people to continue to cook dope while they have a listing of who is buying the boxes for them. With a little detective work they can find out who is making it and bust them. Without the Sudafed, they cannot make it. Do they want to stamp out crystal meth or do they just want to arrest people for making it?

It doesn't make sense. It's not like taking all Tylenol off the market. Sudafed isn't the only choice for very many people. By allowing it to still be sold OTC, they are allowing the manufacture of crystal meth. Is their goal simply to arrest people and clog up the judicial system more and overcrowd the prisons more, or to take away the dope cooks opportunity to cook it?

Wouldn't it just make more sense to simply take it off the market?

Crystal meth isn't really that much of a problem in this country, so banning it here would be overzealous. I can understand the argument for making it prescription only in the US, though.

I used to take generic pseudoephedrine with caffeine pills when I was 16 in order to study. It was also because I didn't know where to get speed, I couldn't buy alcohol and I react very badly to cannabis.

Many over the counter drugs can be abused, should we require a prescription for all of them? The highest I've ever been was when I tried to overdose on aspirin. (Also the sickest I've ever been, mind you. This is not a recommendation!)

You know what? Why not make natural, unrefined 'drugs' legal, such as cannabis? That way people have less reason to concoct horrendously dangerous drugs in their basements.

For instance, I knew someone who went to jail, and when they got out, had to get a UA every week. And every week they took a couple bottles of cough syrup. I asked them why. "They're not looking for it. I'd rather be smoking a bowl but I'll go back to jail if I do."

You aren't going to take away the need of people to alter their consciousness. Everyone does it in some way.

So make available the safest means possible.

All the natural stimulants apart from coca are legal: ephedrine, khat, guarana, etc. The reason people use the synthetic versions is because they're much stronger. The problem with making coca legal is that people will just make cocaine out of it in order to get higher.
Do you think opium should be legal? I think if it was, people would still make heroin out of it, anyway. Non-addictive opiates are on my wishlist of things that should exist, but they don't occur in nature.

Well, personally I think all drugs should be legal, but it's not realistic to think they will be any time soon. Trying to legalize cannabis, psyilocybin, etc, though, probably isn't a totally pointless endeavor.

I think it would be wise to find the source of the perceived need for strong stimulants.

Different drugs thrive in different cultures, in different envirmoments/circumstances.


Such as the example you gave of what you took when you needed to study. Probably overburdened, needed to stay up longer than usual? Or like my mother who drinks a pot of coffee or more a day (not healthy), but who is also working three jobs and raising two children by herself.

Some people just really like getting wired? You could say the need to stimulants is down to several things, like ADHD, shift-work, etc...but really it's mostly just a recreational thing in the same way that getting drunk has been for however many thousands of years we've been fermenting alcoholic beverages. Synthentic stimulants are too strong for me (now), but everyone is different in what they find pleasurable.

I agree with legalising cannabis and psilocybin, as well as synthetic psychedelic drugs. People are always going to want to take dangerous recreational drugs like alcohol/opiates/tobacco whatever culture they live in. I have particular mental health problems that make cannabis a very bad idea for me. If I want to alter my consciousness, all the alternatives are sort of dangerous, but I'm sensible enough to use moderation and avoid the more addictive substances. I just think that drug use is dictated by an individual's neurology/brain chemistry as much as it is by their culture.

Doesn't seem smart to me. If they take a medication off the market:

1) The people that benefited from it will miss it.

2) The people that abused it will go on to something else, and in most cases, it's probably something more dangerous.

Why don't they take Robitussin off the market because if you drink a whole bottle, you'll have an experience not unlike smoking PCP

Taking too much Benedryl can lead to hallucinations where the user can't differentiate hallucination from reality. Same thing for motion sickness pills.

Alcohol! I know my grandpa used it for different applications, but don't let the FDA catch you making some kind of claim on your alcoholic product. Even though the FDA doesn't regulate it, I don't think you can...can you?

its a moral minefield to judge similar behaviors differently,

i prefer a clear cut path taking everyone into consideration over the misguided view of others any day.

Certainly. Different strokes for different folks. As with so many other things, education is the key here.

Also, are people who can afford higher quality drugs as likely to do meth as poorer folks?

I just took sudafed before I logged on just now- to quell my post nasal drip.

Dont take away my sudafed!! !! !

Maybe the manufacturers have a lot 'pull' with the FDA or DEA (or various legislators). Those companies must make a lot of money on the the stuff.

Acetaminophen is pretty dangerous -- leading cause of liver failure in the USA & UK, and it interacts very badly with alcohol -- yet it remains a non-prescription item. Given how common the stuff is, I can't even imagine how much money is made on it.

I recall that quaaludes were made extinct by banning a key chemical for making it. I don't think that chemical had any other common use, though.

My point was, if the government is so adamant to wipe out crystal meth as they say they are, why don't they simply make sudafed prescription. By off the market I don't mean stop manufacturing it. I mean make it prescription.

They did that with Donagel PG. It was a somewhat abused drug when I was a teenager. The paragoric was an opiate and enough of it would of course constipate you to no end, but you would get an opiate high. They had put it behind the counter like they do sudafed now, but they finally took it off the market. It's prescription only now.

It seems hypocritical to me that they want to pursue the dope cooks so doggedly but they don't do the one simple thing that can take the key ingredient out of their hands and put it in the hands only of those who need it. To me it seems like the government wants to force people to change their morality rather than their actions. Does that make any sense in this context? It wants people to choose to not buy and cook something that they enjoy and can profit so easily from rather than do the simple thing and make it prescription. It would still be around for those who need it. Putting it behind the counter has done nothing. It's helped them track down some idiots who were stupid enough to go out and buy a bunch of it themselves. Most people who cook will have friends who know they do it and will get one of them to buy them a box and pay them about $20 just to go in and do it. It hasn't stopped anything. Everybody knows that they keep a database of who buys it on a regular basis and how much. That is turned over to the local cops and they watch them. Thats why cooks get people who don't cook and don't hang out with them to get it for them. If it were prescription, the doctor wouldn't be writing scripts for 90 of them! It would take a lot of people going to a lot of doctors to get enough for one batch. It would solve the problem without hurting anyone.

I think that they are simply hypocrites who profit from both sides of the fence.

Now, to the poster who talked about robotripping, well robotripping while fairly common, doesn't ruin lives the way meth does. I know people who do meth and I'm not one of those who scream about drugs. I think they should all be legal as well, including OTC antibiotics and decadron. Those who can use them responsibly will be fine, those who can't won't. Alcohol can kill you just as easy as drugs can and it ruins lives too.

You don't see anywhere near as much abuse of those other OTC drugs as you do of meth. If making DMX was as widespread a problem as meth is, and as dangerous to society in general rather than only to the users, then they probably should make it script only too. Comparing deleriant antihistamines or DMX to meth is like comparing pineapples to turkey basters. And I'm for weed being legal. It freaks me out and makes me paranoid, but that's just me. It doesn't do that to most people and it's not harmful and it doesn't make you strung out. DMX doesn't make you strung out, nor does benadryl or doxylamine. It can be habit forming, and it can make you want to do it every day, and if you want to do it every day bad enough you may end up stealing etc, but it's nowhere near as likely as with meth.

Your proposal is logical, OOM and would be much more effective than simply targeting the meth labs. I think you already know why they won't make it prescription-only, though. Whoever manufactures it would not make as much money if it was.

For the same reason 'they' keep making crystal meth out of it - there is money to be made either way.

Also, the people who say they want to win the "war on drugs" might not really mean it.
The people who work for the DEA probably just like to make busts in order to justify an ever-expanding budget and have fun with their cool military equipment. At the same time various politicians can say they want to fight drugs without really meaning it to score points with voters. It could be that no one is really serious about 'winning.' Having pseduoephedrine made Rx-only might require some higher-level of political will that isn't there.

I'd rather just make the the meth legal, but that's just me.