Meth addicts ruining it for the rest of us

[sal_amanda]

This is my understanding of the Sudafed situation.  Somehow people are making meth out of regular old store-bought Sudafed, so they're trying to cut back on the amounts of Sudafed one can buy all at once.  I don't really see how this would work as anyone who really wanted enough of the stuff could just go from store to store and have lots of friends helping out or whatever, but who am I to say?

Anyway.  This is where it now affects the average person.  In order to stop people from buying mass quanities, if you want to buy real Sudafed, with actual pseudoephedrine in it, you have to go up to the pharmacy counter and ask for a box.  In fact, any medication that has pseudoephedrine in it must now be obtained from the pharmacy counter.  

Well, as a result of this, many medications have cut out the pseudoephedrine and changed it to some other crappy ingredient that doesn't work as well.  Even Sudafed itself offers this crappy version as Sudafed PE or some such crap.  At least they've given it a different name, but I'm not fooled anyway, though that doesn't mean others are not.  

Now this is where it affects me personally.  I, of course, cannot currently take Sudafed or such products right now anyway.  However, John has been battling some bug or another (we're starting to suspect it's strep so we're trying to keep it contained so I don't get it) and has been taking some Tylenol Cold medicine that we bought last year before all this drug nonsense began, and we needed to buy some more.  Target's vast selection included very few products that actually contained pseudoephedrine, as well as the other ingredients in the old Tylenol, but there was a nice looking Advil cold product that also included the good stuff for coughing and the good stuff for runny nose.  Didn't matter, though, because the pharmacy was closed at the moment so we couldn't get it anyway.  We were next door at Wegman's shortly thereafter and went to their cold medicine aisle, as their pharmacy was still open.  No Advil cold products whatsoever, which I thought was super weird, but more annoying was the fact that there was not a single other medication there that contained all four of the major cold medicine ingredients we were looking for.  There were a couple of things with the sudafed and acetaminophen, but not the other two vital ingredients needed.  

We stood in that stupid aisle for a ridiculous amount of time, unable to find anything that would actually fulfill our simple needs.  In the end, we gave up and bought the new version of Tylenol Cold, but I have my doubts it'll be as good.  Oh, and also, now it only lasts four hours instead of six, which totally blows in a nightime cole medicine.  

All we wanted was cold medicine and the stupid meth addicts had to to go and screw it up for everybody.  Thanks a lot, assholes.