6 ms·
Some Mexican pharmacies are selling full bottles of Adderall. But it's meth
- underseacables 3y agohttps://archive.ph/pvcJW https://archive.ph/pvcJW
- Lammy 3y ago[flagged]
- reddickulous 3y agoI don't see how it's relevant. The counterfeit adderall being sold isn't pharmaceutical grade meth. People buying black market sealed bottles of adderall would probably want to know that it's likely not adderall.
- Lammy 3y agoI think it's relevant because to me the article isn't actually about Adderall vs meth, just using that as the framing for a story about why they think it's bad for anything pharma-related to happen out from under the watchful eye of a US-like medical-industrial-congressional complex. The author is preying upon readers' cultural understanding of meth (via the news media and shows like Breaking Bad) as something inherently dirty, something for which there is no possible safe usage. The existence of FDA-approved meth ruins the framing even if FDA-grade is not what a buyer would be getting.
- epgui 3y agoI'm a biochemist and I completely disagree with your take. There are very few situations where prescribing methamphetamine is reasonable. It's a niche drug. Even XR formulations of Adderall are considered a blunt instrument compared to more recent alternatives. The issue is one of trust, integrity, and safety. Pharmacies should not operate like drug dealers.
- BobaFloutist 3y agoDid you mean IR formulations, or are you saying that extended release formulations of Adderall are considered a blunt instrument? Compared to what other than Vyvanse?
- epgui 3y agoIR (instant release) is the opposite of XR (extended release). I said and meant XR. I don’t even think IR should be used anymore, except maybe in super niche situations (I’m not even sure if I can think of any situation where it makes much sense… maybe narcolepsy?). XR is obviously preferable to IR, but amphetamines have been falling out of favour over the years (it’s a slow trend). Vyvanse, NSRIs and even SSRIs tend to be regarded more and more favourably compared to amphetamines (Adderall) and methylphenidate (Ritalin). (Disclaimer: I myself take Adderall XR 10mg as prescribed, so I have the opposite of a conflict of interest in this context.)
- ceejayoz 3y ago> The existence of FDA-approved meth... ... changes nothing. If you don't expect to be getting meth, you shouldn't be getting meth.
- jkaplowitz 3y agoWhile I agree they should have mentioned Desoxyn - which is even FDA-approved for treating the same condition, ADHD, as Adderall is - nothing makes it okay for a pharmacy in any country to make people think they’re buying one medication when they’re actually getting a different one. Reactions to ADHD meds vary widely among people with ADHD. Just because Desoxyn and Adderall are closely related doesn’t mean that a person who has good results with one will also get those good results with the other, especially not necessarily using the same dosage and timing. All of this assumes they’re selling legitimate pharmaceutical methamphetamine with as much official oversight as other prescription drugs in Mexico. If this is black market meth, it’s even worse due to the unpredictable quality, purity, fillers, and dosage that come with the black market.
- epgui 3y ago> If the author weren't trying so hard to scare-monger Uhhh I am a biochemist and I think being sold methamphetamine as Adderall is completely problematic. Under no circumstances is that okay, and it's potentially quite dangerous. Completely unacceptable.
- burningChrome 3y ago>> If the author weren't trying so hard to scare-monger Just read this article on The Atlantic and I would be scared considering what's passing for meth is considerably stronger than what people think nowadays: Different chemically than it was a decade ago, the drug is creating a wave of severe mental illness and worsening America’s homelessness problem. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/11/the-new-meth/620174/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/11/the-new...
- valec 3y agoThis article is peak scaremongering. At this point, cartel meth is approaching 98% purity. Given sufficient purity, it doesn't matter the synthetic pathway as the end result is the same.
- burningChrome 3y ago>> This article is peak scaremongering. Yeah, this is "peak scaremongering"? But by 2014 the new meth was everywhere. When that happened, “it seemed that people were losing their minds faster,” a Los Angeles Police Department beat officer named Deon Joseph told me. Joseph had worked Skid Row for 22 years. “They’d be okay when they were just using crack,” Joseph said. “Then in 2014, with meth, all of a sudden they became mentally ill. They deteriorated into mental illness faster than I ever saw with crack cocaine.” Susan Partovi has been a physician for homeless people in Los Angeles since 2003. She noticed increasing mental illness—schizophrenia, bipolar disorder—at her clinics around the city starting in about 2012. She was soon astonished by “how many severely mentally ill people were out there,” Partovi told me. “Now almost everyone we see when we do homeless outreach on the streets is on meth. Meth may now be causing long-term psychosis, similar to schizophrenia, that lasts even after they’re not using anymore.” Drugs that cause psychosis much faster than ever before? Yeah, you're right, nothing to see here.
- valec 3y agoNewsflash---stimulants are prone to give people stimulant psychosis. Rising meth usage leads to rising psychosis. Again, with cartel meth approaching 98+% purity, the synthetic pathway doesn't really matter much anymore.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y agoThis is the weirdest, worst take I've read today. Yes, meth can be sold by prescription in the US. Why you think that's relevant to a Mexican pharmacy selling meth as a completely different medication, and then having the audacity to call it "scare-mongering", is truly bizarro to me. I mean, fentanyl is commonly used as a prescription medication in the US. Would it be "scare mongering" if a journalist reported that a pharmacy sold fentanyl as Xanax without mentioning fentanyl can be used by prescription in the US? Why do you think that even matters?
- Lammy 3y ago> Would it be "scare mongering" if a journalist reported that a pharmacy sold fentanyl as Xanax without mentioning fentanyl can be used by prescription in the US? Why do you think that even matters? You were in such a rush to castigate me that you didn't bother reading my reply to any other comment lol https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38729414 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38729414
- hn_throwaway_99 3y agoFine, I just read it. It still makes no sense. You have latched on to the fact that meth can be sold with a prescription in the US. It's still totally irrelevant to the issue at hand.
- uxp100 3y agoObviously not good, I’m just being a little glib. If correctly dosed I suppose people would be getting a somewhat more effective medication than they thought they were getting. Those who were getting caffeine or ibuprofen, not so much.
- epgui 3y agoWhy do you think methamphetamine would be more effective than amphetamines?
- soudiere 3y agoHigher potency, longer duration of action. If your goal was to get inebriated (drinking), would everclear be more effective than vodka?
- uxp100 3y agoI was thinking of user surveys. There was a Slate Star Codex/Astral Codex Ten article that goes through different ADHD medications, and those who take Desoxyn report being happier with their medications performance. The article notes all the reasons to be skeptical, but there is some reason to believe meth is a better ADHD drug than Adderall.
- oooyay 3y agoCan anyone explain what is going on with the Adderall supply?
- madars 3y agoDEA has a set cap for amphetamine production and demand is higher than the cap.
- trashface 3y agoHowever DEA was claiming a few months ago that manufacturers had not used their allotted cap, so naturally the DEA did not raise it.
- BobaFloutist 3y agoThey were claiming that specific manufacturers had not used their allotted cap, so they refused to raise the cap of other manufacturers that had reached their cap.
- soudiere 3y agoDEA isn't the issue here. The Justice Department brought the lawsuit against Purdue Pharma, and distributors are scared.
- azdle 3y agoAs far as I could tell reading that DEA memo, they were being really sneaky with what they said. None of the pill manufacturers had hit their allotment, but they didn't say anything about the raw ingredient manufacturers which are under a different quota. And most of the shortages I've seen in the FDA shortages database were listed as 'shortage of active ingredient'. (Or 'demand increase', which isn't specific enough to know that it's not literally the same thing.)
- soudiere 3y agoNah fam, this is fallout from Purdue pharma litigation, distributors are figuring out how to shield their future liability. Have a read here from people who work in the industry https://www.reddit.com/r/medicine/comments/16dur21/stimulant_shortage_im_giving_up_yall/ https://www.reddit.com/r/medicine/comments/16dur21/stimulant...
- Areibman 3y agoI just came back from Puerto Vallarta, and it's shocking how pharmacies advertise their drugs to tourists. I'm talking massive signs with every prescription med under the sun-- Adderall, Xanax, Retinol, you name it. All next to the HGH and testosterone posters featuring unreasonably muscular bodybuilders.
- logtempo 3y agoIn Bolivia, I was amused by the plastic bag they gave me for my meds that was advertising: "zero counterfait guaranteed". At this moment I realized how far we went in wealthy countries, in my case Europe countries, in the regulation of drugs.
- standardUser 3y agoIt's true! In many parts of Mexico, including Mexico City, this is not the case at all. Even in Guadalajara, which is in the same state as PV, you can't buy this stuff without a prescription. But I was in PV and my partner had a headache so we wandered into a pharmacy in an upscale neighborhood to buy some ibuprofen and to our surprise the pharmacist was a hell of a saleswoman! We walked out with a variety of benzos and boner pills.
- burningChrome 3y agoMy roommates in college were amateur body builders and used to go down to Mexico in the early aughts to get testosterone and bring it back since they were starting to clamp down on the abuse of it here. They stopped doing it when two things happened. A) One of their buddies who they lifted with got a counterfeit batch of T and got really sick and spent two weeks in the hospital. B) Some of the guys at the gym were bragging they were getting T from Mexico too, but would buy it with counterfeit $100 super bills they got somewhere in Vegas (still have no idea how they got them) and then would bring their T back and sell it for a huge profits to other bodybuilders who didn't want to risk getting caught at the border. They eventually did got caught and did several years in a Mexican jail. Now you just have to go to your doctor and tell him your sex drive is down or you have ED and they'll put on you on TRT pretty quickly without all the fuss. Its pretty standard now for older men to be on a TRT regiment.
- 3y ago
- dehrmann 3y agoIsn't adderall basically prescription meth, anyway?
- bqmjjx0kac 3y agoSure, in the same way that rubbing alcohol is basically vodka. I'm sure you didn't mean anything by it, but it's frustrating to hear this line over and over as someone who needs these prescriptions to function.
- 55555 3y agoHave you ever tried meth? I feel like you’re demonizing meth. There is someone reading this who needs meth to function and you’re comparing their prescription to rubbing alcohol. Meth has higher user ratings on Drugs.com for treating ADHD than dextroamphetamine or Adderall etc have. If it weren’t for the side effect profile and potential for abuse, I reckon it would be the mainline treatment. I empathize and understand what you mean though. When others say you’re basically on meth, that must not feel good.
- bongodongobob 3y agoA. They aren't comparing it to rubbing alcohol. The analogy is that they are both alcohol so they are the same right? Obviously not. B. I've tried meth. It's nothing like Adderall and much, much more potent.
- thaumasiotes 3y ago> The analogy is that they are both alcohol so they are the same right? Obviously not. They are the same. The difference is just that the bottle sold as "rubbing alcohol" has been intentionally poisoned.
- kosherhurricane 3y agoRubbing alcohol is isopropanol. Drinking alcohol is ethanol. You can get “industrial ethanol” that has some methanol added to prevent people from consuming it, and pay liquor tax on it. These are for chemists for specific applications. None of these things are “the same”.
- skymast 3y ago[dead]
- blovescoffee 3y agoThe headline is so odd! Adderall is not sold in Mexico and the article mentions this several times. It's of course unfortunate someone would buy the wrong drug. The bigger headline is buried which is that people mistakenly bought fentanyl instead of other painkillers (which are actually legally prescribed). This is a much more deadly mistake.
- khaki54 3y agoThey're not sending their best pharmaceuticals, folks!
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- adolph 3y agoWhat would it take to make consumer systems to characterize molecules to see if they conform to a particular spec? The FDA et al are great and all if you live in the nice places of the world. They aren't so great for the rest of the world.
- soudiere 3y agoThe worst discussions we have on Hacker News are around healthcare and medicine. For some reason the community refuses to apply a high of research and rigor to this topic, as if it's lesser than the non-sense we call computer science. This entire debate is comical, the medical community's approach has been, by it's own admission, to throw various stimulants at ADHD. Methylphenidate, L-Amphetamine, D-Amphetamine, Lisdexamfetamine, etc. By in large, everyone on this thread is pretending like there is a treasure trove of research demonstrating the superiority of Adderall (a racemic mixture of L & D amphetamine) to Methylamphetamine. And that's just not true at all, there is a paucity of research on the subject. Meth = Bad because of the Germans and street drug users (who smoke an uncontrolled amount).
- klipklop 3y agoAgreed. I get tired of people that don’t have to deal with ADHD trying to apply some sort of morality to stimulants to treat the condition. If something else actually worked people would gladly try it. Stimulants have so many downsides and side effects that most would never take it unless it was necessary for them to function. These people are not junkies looking to get high. Not too surprised to see people say here stuff like “isn’t adderall just meth” dose and delivery methods are completely different.
- xeckr 3y agoI'm decently sure that there is a dosage for methamphetamine for which the effects are (nearly) indistinguishable from "regular" d-amphetamine, assuming that the route of administration is the same.