Phenylephrine reformulation a flop?
This article concerning changes in over-the-counter (OTC)cold medications is interesting.
Phenylephrine reformulation a flop?
The basic story is that in order to prevent pseudoephedrine from being extracted from OTC products and made in methamphetamine (aka crystal meth). The main product being used instead is phenylephrine. Below are the structures.
While these two compounds are similar in structure, they have very different effects in the body. I have heard personally from several folks who say the phenylephrine formulation is either totally ineffective compared to pseudoephedrine or not nearly as effective.
Here in Oregon, all pseudoephedrine products are behind the pharmacy counter and require filling out form and only a limited amount can be purchased.
This is another case of hurrying a “solution” without it being investigated. To my knowledge, no studies have been done comparing these and the article points this out. All medications must be both safe and efficacious. But again a lot of money would have to be spent for a small benefit in terms of the pharmaceutical company. That is there return in investment would not be large enough to justify studying it without some sort of incentive. Now, I think incentives can be abused but that this is an areas (along with orphan drug status) where it is worth it in the long run. This is an areas that I think the government should get into. Testing of drugs in some limited context when there is a overwhelming interest to consumers is where the government should get involved.
i personally think that a better effort would be to reformulate pseduoephedrine in such a way as to make it almost impossible to extract the active ingredient for making meth. However, again, the pharma companies are not going to invest a large amount of money into doing this since the pay off would be low compared to other possible activities they could invest their time and effort into. This is where a small company could make some money in collaboration with the government.
It remains to be seen what will be the outcome. My best guess is that phenylephrine will be withdraw as a cold medication due to lack of efficacy and that pseduoephedrine will continue to be available only directly from the pharmacist and in limited amounts.
Technorati Tags: col medicines, phenylephrine, pseduoephedrine, reformulation
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December 4th, 2006 at 10:03 am
Whereas I agree that not enough has been done to investigate the efficacy of phenylephrine, there are other issues associated with reformulating pseudoephedrine. Because the way this drug is abused - accumulation of larger batches then extraction of the active ingredient - my belief is that however well you design your formulation there will always be an incentive to the meth lab chemist to attempt to extract pseudoephedrine. This is simply because money can be made in solving the problem and there a sufficiently good chemists operating in some of the larger methlabs to attempt this successfully. In particular, if a formulation gets approved and is sold as teh only OTC formulation, it will be the only formulation that can be bought in large quantities and therefore the incentive to break it will be high. Once the problem is solved and extraction possible, dissemination of the knowledge on the web is inevitable. I’m not sure that any pharmaceutical company would want to open its product to this kind of risk or that OTC pseudoephedrine in whatever form will be available in the future.
December 4th, 2006 at 10:55 am
You bring up some very good points. It may be that keeping it behind the counter is the way to go. I know several folks have complained but I think the slight inconvenince of having to get it during pharmacy hours and having to ask and fill out a short form is wirth it if it cuts down on the availability of meth. However, I did see a TV report recently that stated that 80% of mteh comes into the US from across the board with Mexico, so it really istn’t a solution, only a stop gap at best.
December 14th, 2007 at 6:58 pm
So, is it agreed by everyone that we should give up our effective cold medicines (effective at relieving symptoms) in order to make things more inconvenient for meth makers? If the effective medicines behind the counter don’t sell as well as the ineffective ones, they most certainly will be harder to find (I’m partial to nyquil with psuedophedrine - currently only available as NyQuil D). And of course I’m going to be sick during non-pharmacy hours. It seems to me that we have chosen to force millions of innocent Americans to suffer in order to combat the meth problem. Thanks a lot, do-gooders!