Comment by zamnos | Hacker News Reader

Comment by zamnos | Hacker News Reader

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I agree should be, but unfortunately that's not the case. Not in proper detail. Broadly, the DEA's power comes from the Controlled Substances Act, originally passed in 1970 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_Substances_Act, but the modern day limits themselves are secret.

The medications described are Schedule II, which is defined as "The drug or other substance has a currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States or a currently accepted medical use with severe restrictions."

One citation for the limits being secret are:

Ike Swetlitz, I (2023) "Xanax and Adderall Access Is Being Blocked by Secret Drug Limits". Bloomberg, Online edition. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-04-03/adderall-...

> Xanax and Adderall Access Is Being Blocked by Secret Drug Limits

> The Drug Enforcement Administration regulates the manufacturing, distribution and sale of controlled substances, which can be dangerous when used improperly

> the limits themselves are secret.

> A Cardinal Health document reviewed by Bloomberg News says that limits are calculated on a daily, monthly, and quarterly basis.

Someone willng to pursue a lawsuit might file a FOIA and pursue in court for non-response. A sketchy approach could be suing pharmacy for ... something ... then find the limits for that company via legal discovery. Land of the free or not.

We might be able to get the ACLU to sign on. They've filed a number of lawsuits for patients being denied gender-affirming care in various states. Without getting into a debate about the politics of gender-affirming care, those lawsuits would seem to spell out that denial of life-affirming care that sufferers of ADHD, a federally recognized disability, have experienced could give them legal standing to sue doctors over.

> those lawsuits would seem to spell out that denial of life-affirming care that sufferers of ADHD, a federally recognized disability, have experienced could give them legal standing to sue doctors over.

As a person with adhd, why would i want to sue my provider? They have nothing to do with why there's been an adderall shortage since october. it seems to me the last thing I want to do is make providers feel averse to treating adhd out of concern for being sued.

How do they have nothing to do? They’re part of the feedback cycle. They’re the hand that feeds.

Not a lawyer, but it seems plausible that doctors here do 'nothing' in terms of doing damages that would establish legal standing. A doctor that is prescribing medications indicated to treat a diagnosed condition at reasonable dosages isn't doing harm/inflicting damages on patients. And if there are broader social harms coming from aggregated practices of physicians in general (e.g. over-prescribing), it would be unreasonable for any individual physician or medical practice to bear the burden of punishment/compensatory payment on behalf of the industry in general.

This sort of thing is better handled through regulatory and legislative means. Perhaps it's not being handled particularly well at the moment, but the status quo seems preferable to establishing precedent that one can successfully sue a doctor for writing appropriate prescriptions for drugs that are scarce due to supply chain bottlenecks.

Thank you for articulating all of this, I don't think I'd have been able to put it this well.

as per the article, the limits are being imposed by the DEA not the pharmacies and not the distributors.... a better approach would be to do a FOIA on the DEA and get all evidence about their restrictions on distributors for schedule IV narcotics (xanax, adderall, etc) and then sue the DEA maybe for interfering with interstae commerce, i dont know...

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