Looked into it. This isn’t what I thought it was. They aren’t looking to ban sudafed where the active ingredient is pseudoephedrine, which is the stuff that actually works that you have to scan your drivers license at the pharmacy counter to buy, it’s the over the counter kind where the active ingredient is phenylephrine which, the FDA unfortunately is right, literally doesn’t work for shit. My wife and I learned this a long time ago. If you can buy it without a drivers license honestly I couldn’t care less if they ban it because I honestly don’t know what it even does. But the good stuff that you need a drivers license to buy apparently isn’t going anywhere so we can probably put our pitchforks down on this particular issue at least.
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Actually the conspiracy happened long ago on this particular drug. When the FDA found out people could use it to make meth they limited how much you could buy and forced you to scan your ID in order to buy it. Not wanting to lose any OTC revenue, drug companies released this fake phenylephrine knock off under the same name even though studies had shown for decades it was no stronger than a placebo. Phenylephrine dies $2b/year in the cold and flu aisle. This looks like a rare case where the FDA is actually looking out for people who have been getting scammed by this poor, ineffective knockoff.
The conspiracy was there, I just don’t think it’s now.
Congress "figured it out" and added to the law via the PATRIOT act. What they really wanted was an "electronic log book" in the pharmacy they could look at whenever they wanted.