In NZ, pseudoephedrine products were banned, and now no-one smokes methamphetamine at all! Totally worth removing an effective medicine from the market. Haha,

In NZ, pseudoephedrine products were banned, and now no-one smokes methamphetamine at all! Totally worth removing an effective medicine from the market. Haha, I am of course kidding, the meth trade is fuelling gang violence harder than ever, and it now really sucks if you get heavily congested sinuses. When I'm travelling via Australia I try to buy as much pseudoephedrine containing medicines as I think I can bring back to NZ without looking like a smuggler, and then ration them out to family members very begrudgingly. Meanwhile, methamphetamine is coming into the country in large quantities in shipping containers (along with illegal firearms). Banning pseudoephedrine was totally worth it... And now something similar is occurring with cough suppressants, the ones that contained dextromethorphan, i.e., the ones that worked, turns out some people were abusing them recreationally, (DXM is a disassociative in high enough doses), so now that's gone, and we're left with pholcodine, which I find far less effective, but that too is looking likely to be banned, because apparently that's abusable too. I'm not sure our regulators have the balance right.