alt Hacker NewsPseudoephedrine being pulled from the shelves is one of the biggest crimes of our time.
Pseudoephedrine should be easy and plentiful to obtain. I don't care if people use it to make meth. What they do in their private time doesn't concern me. Not being able to get Sudafed when I'm sick kills me. It's not like those people won't be able to get meth some other way.
We let people buy cars and cause 43,000 automobile deaths a year. People should be able to live life without stuffy noses. Maybe license people to buy meds and take it away if they abuse it? That's better than the draconian system we have now.
And don't get me started on ADHD medication and their shortages.
Edit: and there are 178,000 alcohol related deaths per year in the US. If you're going to allow that without prohibition, then please let us unstuff our noses.
I'm tired of living in a nanny state when we let people buy and own guns and swords and flamethrowers. Simply hiking on a mountain can kill you. Must we install guardrails on all the high places?
It's not that bad of a negative externality. Honestly. Not relative to all the other ones we've deemed acceptable. This is weird picking and choosing that doesn't make sense.
Replies
> Pseudoephedrine should be easy and plentiful to obtain
Anything that isn't directly physically addictive (e.g. opiates) or subject to a tragedy of the commons (e.g. antibiotics) should be over the counter.
It is a bit silly to ban a useful drug like pseudoephedrine while large parts of the US is in an opioid crisis. Kind of like how lawn darts have disappeared from stores but you can still buy all sorts of weapons. That said, a lot of laws are based on established traditions. Alcohol use goes back thousands of years, and the other things you mentioned such as vehicles and weapons are tools going back even longer. They are dangerous tools, to be sure, and often employed unnecessarily in this society, but tools nonetheless. Once upon a time most people depended on their weapons and vehicles to survive, and differences in the quality and quantity of weapons and transportation technology have historically led to the rise and fall of entire civilizations.
> Maybe license people to buy meds and take it away if they abuse it? That's better than the draconian system we have now.
I sympathize with your broader point, but... how is that better? "Sorry, you were buying too much nasal decongestant a decade ago, so no cancer medication for you"?
I read a study here in Australia a little while ago that showed that removal of easily accessible pseudoephedrine had done nothing to either stop the proliferation of clandestine labs, nor curtail the availability of crystal meth. They just switched to different syntheses, and there are still large-scale imports that sometimes get caught, sometimes don't.
People were still trying to claim the program was a success because they had stopped gangs getting pseudo as a precursor.
But so what? it's done literally nothing to stop criminals profiting, nor to stop people getting addicted to meth, with all the associated public health and petty-criminal consequences of that. And now it's harder for ordinary people to get effective decongestant.
It just seems that nobody is willing to admit the whole thing was pointless.
You can get it in the UK, fortunately.[0]
0: https://www.nhs.uk/medicines/pseudoephedrine/about-pseudoeph...
> I don't care if people use it to make meth. What they do in their private time doesn't concern me.
You ever seen a meth lab that blew up?
The car stat is a good example of trying new policies to lower car deaths! They are the greatest risk to my children's lives and I find it terrifying that we let them roll around everywhere so close to people, like we do in parking lots.
>Maybe license people to buy meds and take it away if they abuse it?
I'm a bit confused, because you can buy it already with an ID, correct? You don't even need a purchasing license, just a drivers license or other government ID.
> Pseudoephedrine being pulled from the shelves is one of the biggest crimes of our time.
What's even worse, modern pseudoephedrine is produced in a form that makes meth synthesis from it extremely tedious and generally impossible in home conditions: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3793278/