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Comment by xyzzy_plugh | Hacker News Reader

The US is so weird. Elsewhere, like Canada, pseudoephedrine is readily available without needing to present any ID. I always bring some with me when I travel just in case.

Everyone knows phenylephrine is useless.

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In case you're not aware, it's because pseudoephedrine is used to make meth. As for why it's restricted in the US and not Canada, the DOJ believes that meth production in Canada is relatively low compared to the US [1].

[1] https://www.justice.gov/archive/ndic/pubs13/13853/product.ht...

I think the implication is that the rest of the world isn’t overrun by tweakers?

As a pedantic correction was used to make meth. Once the supply ran out it became just one more step to make whatever it needed other ways.

Practically speaking, lots of things are used to make meth. I had to give ID last time I bought acetone. Which is crazy for all sorts of big brother reasons.

I’m not a chemist, but as I understand it, meth isn’t too often made with PE anymore, yet, it sits behind the counter forever now.

Obviously this isn't reflective of any actual history, but in the first season of Breaking Bad, one of the early innovations that the main characters made to how they produced meth was coming up with a method that avoided needing PE. If I remember correctly, they instead used methylamine, which is an amusingly smart choice by the writers because it literally starts with the word "meth" but has absolutely no utility when making meth, so they didn't have to worry about people getting any ideas from the show.

It's used in the P2P method and is a DEA List 1 chemical. It's definitely real chemistry, not fake chemistry. Much of the chemistry on the show was close enough while being vague enough not to actually help anyone who couldn't read the voluminous research papers on the matter.

Interesting! I must have misunderstand whatever explanation I heard about this back when watching it (which isn't super surprising in retrospect, given that my chemistry knowledge is limited to having taking AP chem in high school, which I'm now realizing was over a decade ago...)

They did throw in some red herrings, deliberately, I think, but the vibe overall was real enough. But honestly the show in general is pretty lackluster from a chemistry nerd standpoint (as is the synthesis of illicit substances in general, real snoozefest of gross white powders turning into gross illegal white powders), there are a bunch of youtube channels doing chemistry that is both more interesting AND won't cause visits from the nice people at the three letter agencies.

Phenylacetone, acetic acid, and methylamine are the ingredients in the Breaking Bad process. There are some fictional aspects, such as the blue color, but the process is real and has become the dominant method of producing meth. It's more cost-effective as I understand it, so removing restrictions on pseudoephedrine probably wouldn't have any effect on the meth supply today.

https://dynomight.net/p2p-meth/

Yup. A while back, I was stopped at the register buying less than a liter of acetone and denatured alcohol (for cleaning molds and bonding surfaces for advanced composites) at the same time — forbidden. So I checked out one and paid, then checked out & paid for the other in two immediately sequential transactions. The check-out woman and I shared a small chuckle at how (in-)effective those measures were...

> I’m not a chemist, but as I understand it, meth isn’t too often made with PE anymore, yet, it sits behind the counter forever now.

Sadly, far too many laws, once on the books, are never considered for removal, even when the original reason for their enactment no longer applies.

Unless enough of us voters badger our congress critters to repeal the "hide the PE" law, it will continue to sit behind the counter.

Sigh. If they put it back out where smurfs could gather it they would start using it again.

Its interesting how Americans are so trained to interpret everything as a failure of government we will find a way to think that the law that prevents meth makers from using sudafed is outdated because meth makers are prevented from using sudafed.

Nobody should care whether meth makers are prevented from using sudafed; we should (maybe) care if they're prevented from making meth.

They switched methods, and the new method seems to be more cost-effective so it's unlikely they'd switch back even without the restrictions.

https://dynomight.net/p2p-meth/

They've already come up with better, cheaper, more efficient methods. They don't need Sudafed anymore, so removing the stupid restriction won't affect meth production at all.

Do you actually believe this? It seems completely ignorant of human behavior to me.

You see, it's not about dealing with large-scale operations. It's about keeping that one neighbor you have who always makes poor choices from grabbing 1000 boxes of Sudafed and blowing up their house. They don't care what the industrial process is, they care what they can get away with in their living room.

Throttle access to pseudoephedrine sufficiently and they will look elsewhere. Make it easy to get and they'll DIY. You know, I even admire the DIY spirit involved. I just don't admire the externalities.

The subtext of your argument is that you think you can legislate away human behavior.

There is a cheap process to make meth, and there’s another process that involves Sudafed. Banning Sudafed does not stop meth production. But here you are still supporting a ban on Sudafed - because of what some theoretical person might do with it ignoring that they’re doing it now without it.

I don’t believe this is a logical failure, I believe whatever culture you grew up in imparted this way of thinking.

The culture I grew up in is one where this happened about once a month. Well, before Sudafed became hard to get. Then the rate of it occuring dropped precipitously.

It's almost like people in fact do base their choices on what's easily available.

It's not so much "used to make meth" as that it is some very simple chemistry away from being meth, and that chemistry, when employed by the amateurs who use Sudafed to make meth, is particularly rough on the neighbors.

Paraphrasing, it's not a big deal that it's used to make meth - it's a big deal that it's used to make exploding meth labs.

Yes. Pseudoephedrine itself is a mild stimulant. Tweaking the molecule (npi) turns it into a powerful stimulant.

Pseudoephedrine was a massive source of meth a decade or two ago.

https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna28802912

"Mexican authorities said they have seized nearly 3 tons of pseudoephedrine from a ship that arrived from South Korea."

Who needs meth when you have poutine and maple syrup to get you through Christmas?

> Everyone knows phenylephrine is useless.

It’s pretty easy to find phenylephrine on the shelves in Canada (I’d say about half the drugs use it vs pseudoephrine) so obviously somebody is buying it. Anecdotally, I always tell people to read the labels and only buy pseudoephrine based medication, and it’s consistently a surprise to people - I don’t think the difference was anywhere near universally known.

People buy homeopathic remedies by the truckload too. They are even less effective than phenylephrine.

The average person has no clue how to evaluate medicines. Stupid laws should not impede those of us who do have said clue.

That's strange and I was surprised reading in the article that phenylephrine is ineffective. Basically this is the only combo that works for me all the time: https://www.drugs.com/mtm/pheniramine-and-phenylephrine.html

It's available as Neo Citran in the EU. Tried a couple of other meds, neither worked, nor the parts of the combo separately (combined with other stuff). Only side effect is that it knocks me out a bit, making me feel tired. At least falling asleep is easier. It's the side effect of pheniramine.

But not in (at least much of) the UK apparently. I was on vacation in England and Scotland a year ago and many in our group came down with an annoying cold.

Every chemist had piles of phenylephrine tablets but no pseudoephedrine (or even phenylephrine nasal spray, which works quite well). I did not have a fun time explaining to my sniffly girlfriend why these were all trash and there was no point in buying them - she just wanted some relief and couldn't understand how I would somehow know better than all the different drugs on the shelves. It made me feel like some nutty conspiracy theorist, insisting that the medicine was all phony.

Thankfully it didn't derail the trip, and in the end I found some other nasal spray that sort-of worked.

Pharmacies in the UK absolutely do stock pseudoephedrine. It's usually behind the counter and you have to ask for it.

"Sinutab, or own brand, without pain relief" is what you're looking for, for anyone reading.

I’ve bought pseudoephedrine tablets at Boots on a trip but I think I did have to ask at the counter.

I've found plain 'ol saline nasal spray works well enough... and, a hot toddy helps clear the sinuses.

Mint tea too! Or some Fisherman's Friends

Regular use of a neti pot has changed the life of my nasal passages. It's a great device.

It is generally available behind the counter in chemists all over the UK. One simply has to ask, and there are no ID requirements.

There is a limit to how many they will supply, but I'm not sure what it is. Generally available now in two forms, with and without paracetamol.

It used to be available off the shelf, but that changed about 15-20 years ago, for the same illicit drug production issues.

The UK's pharmaceutical culture is poor. If "NICE" doesn't think something is the right way to treat a condition, forget it. Even people with diagnosed conditions can struggle to acquire medication. Also, beware of daring to mention the name of a medication, because that's a sign of "drug seeking"! (Luckily I've not been on the receiving end of this, but know folks who have.)

Please keep nationalistic flamebait out of your comments here. It leads to nationalistic flamewar (in the general case—not in this thread, but that was by luck).

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I'm puzzled by this comment.

The first thing that sprung to mind when reading the article was how terrible it was to be treated like a drug abusing criminal whenever we tried to purchase anything containing pseudoephedrine in the United States.

Pharmacist can't figure out how to scan an out of country license, makes you get your passport. Can't figure out how to scan your passport, makes you get additional ID. Can't figure out what to do with additional ID, shrugs and says sorry you can't have this medicine. I'm sorry, what??? Is this a joke? I was turned away at the pharmacy buying cold medication?

Don't even get me started about prescriptions that family members literally depend on for their livelihoods and the continuous monthly battle to keep those prescriptions filled. And I'm not just referring to stimulants.

Insofar as I can tell the prevalence of phenylephrine is due solely to this dumb policy under the umbrella of The dumb War on Drugs.

If this is somehow nationalistic flamebait, or somehow leads to nationalist flamewar, I fail to see how that is my fault. I pay plenty of US taxes, I buy my medicines elsewhere.

It's not puzzling if you look at it just from the most superficial level, which is how internet dynamics work. Any comment of the form "$country is so $bad. Elsewhere, like $other-country, $good" is going to evoke angry replies in the general case.

Edit: while I have you, can you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and adhere to the guidelines more closely? You broke them in other places recently as well (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38696491)

On the plus side, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38664857 was great and I am going to send you a repost invite for it!

> Everyone knows phenylephrine is useless.

Easy to say now once it’s proved.

If it took that long for regulators and the drug industry to figure out that phenylephrine is worthless, I certainly don't hold out much hope for more advanced cures.

The same is true if corruption rather than incompetence is the explanation.

Except anyone could have known it did nothing for them. My sister and I confirmed this many years ago.

I recall it being the year it came out when I heard it was useless.

It's been pretty common knowledge for years that it doesn't work. That doesn't mean that common knowledge was right, but it certainly isn't a case of everybody only now claiming they knew it.

Actually, it's funny. My parents aren't Libertarian, but they kinda lean that way in terms of not trusting the government - etc. When they restricted pseudoephedrine, they immediately were suspicious about phenylephrine and eventually came to the conclusion that it doesn't do anything. They'd demand pseudoephedrine and claim that phenylephrine was just a way to restrict pseudoephedrine while allowing pharma to rip us off, yada yada. That's where my strong disdain for phenylephrine came from. Once I was in college buying my own medicine, I came to the same conclusion that one worked and one didn't. Pseudoephedrine was just a miracle drug to me, I remember stopping taking it too early and feeling blegh within hours.

We've known for ages - https://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisalvo/2015/10/26/the-pop...

Everyone who is easily congested already knew it.

Nope, I remember the first time I tried to use a phenylephrine based cold tablet it after the big uproar about putting pseudoephedrine behind the counter - this is more than a decade ago. I’ve always had relief from pseudoephedrine but I felt absolutely no effect from the phenylephrine tablets (apart from the paracetamol they also contain, but zero decongestant effect). I looked it up and other people were reporting the same, I was so annoyed I never bought it again and from then always ask for the real thing.

Weird thing was the pharmacists always want to know why you’re asking (even beyond doing the drivers license check) and I had to say every time that the off the shelf tablets do literally do nothing for me.

It never worked for me, but I thought that was a "because me" thing.

It makes me both exhausted and unable to sleep, and although I'm not very good at very many things, I'm generally an exceptional sleeper so this was something I wasn't willing to experiment on dosage experiments to make it work.

Ha. I think everyone who tried it said this. I think every conversation I've had with a sick person has included the phrase "this over the counter stuff doesn't do anything". The most cursory search of the internet finds an article from 2006 with the literal phrase "There's just one problem. Phenylephrine doesn't work, and most in the pharmaceutical industry know it."

https://reason.com/2006/12/21/step-away-from-the-cold-medici...

And 2005 is the year Phenylephrine replaced Pseudoephedrine, so it's not like it took anyone any time at all to figure this out.

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