there are freakout posts every hour or so on r/adhd. desperate plans to amass a huge petition of signatures, or challenge it legally with a class act. lawsuit, but mostly a lot of despair and disbelief. also some blaming of the so-called undeserved adderall users that are allegedly the official reason for the shortage…and something about tiktok users.
it’s bad and capitalism is certainly the reason why. i’d like to understand the nuance of it more though if anyone had some good leftist takes on it.
Time to return to research chemicals I guess.
“they used this shit to make bonobos do algebra, so it’s probably fine for me”
I’d never do a stimulant but I’ve done some LSD analogues before and they’re pretty good.
Of course it’s a crap-shoot because it just as easily could end up toxic which is just another reason why the war on drugs is big stinky.
Here I was patting myself on the back for getting insurance so I could get a diagnosis:yea:
If you’re prescribed extended release, Vyvanse, or some other form of medication you won’t be nearly as impacted by the shortages. One step at a time though, it’s good to get a better understand about yourself with the psychiatrist!
‘Most ADHD medications fall into a class of controlled substances called central nervous system stimulants. Because the medications have a well-documented history of abuse and addiction, the FDA and Drug Enforcement Administration limit how many pills a pharmacy can dispense at once and how frequently patients can refill their prescriptions. The DEA also sets limits on the active ingredients pharmaceutical companies use to make these drugs each year.
“The DEA is involved if any manufacturers try to scale up production,” Ganio said. The DEA calculates how much of a given drug ingredient is needed to meet demand, then allocates that precise amount. The problem, according to Ganio, is how DEA uses historical data — meaning prescription numbers from previous years — to set these amounts.’
:wtyp: Source
What I heard from my pharmacist:
Only a handful of companies are allowed to produce adderall because of the war on drugs. the main factory for one of these companies was temporarily shut down last year. This was apparently because of black mold contaminating a different production line (not adderall).
The working conditions there were also horrible, so the discovery of black mold set off a worker’s strike which has since been resolved.
Only so much adderall can be legally manufactured at a time. The US government is very slow to increase these limits so it can maintain control / limit amount of unused Adderall. It uses historical numbers to adjust, working off the RX number from previous years.
This typically benefits the pharma corps because it creates artificial scarcity + drives up cost, equalling higher profits. However those same companies are now behind the demand curve to such an extent there is a shortage. They are now losing money.
This has been combined with an uptick in people who were finally able to get diagnosed with adhd because telehealth became more accessible and the cost of being assessed went down.
The pharma companies cut corners to maximize profits, ate shit, and now the control mechanisms set in place by the war on drugs is making it so they can’t catch up.
TL;DR: it’s the US government and incompetent pharma corps, not individual people trying to get medication.
I dont think it’s capitalism specifically. It’s just American idiocy + capitalism = this shit
People from other countries aren’t having a shortage because their drug production isn’t dictated by a police organization
