[xylophonermore]

I, like many others I suspect, bought phenylephrine when Sudafed first disappeared from store shelves. It was 100% ineffective for me from the first dose.

In the meantime, Sudafed has become one of the most difficult to acquire substances for my daily life (I need it every day as directed by my doc). So many times when I go to a pharmacy to get it, they're out of 96-count or 48-count or any count, meaning my one allowed purchase/month nets me less than a month's worth. Or the state's tracking system is down (this happens frequently) and they won't sell me anything. IOW, buying Sudafed is difficult and often infuriating.

Meanwhile, meth problems haven't gone away—-in fact meth use is WAY up since these restrictions were put in place in the aughts. Sure, hiding and tracking it got some of the meth production moved south, but it didn't negatively affect meth availability. Supply is plentiful, prices are down, purity is up. Even Oregon, who restricted Sudafed to prescription only, has seen a 3x increase in meth deaths. [1]

Sadly, the restrictions on Sudafed are unlikely to ever change as lawmakers rarely care that their laws hurt a ton of law-abiding people as long as they can claim something about being tough on crime.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/13/us/meth-crystal-drug.html

[freedomben]

I've been in this boat too, and it's infuriating. I once had a doctor that wrote me a script for it though and the pharmacy let me get a whole 90 day supply with no problems. I ended up moving and couldn't see this doc anymore, sadly. This was in the late 00s though, I don't doubt that they closed this "loophole" and don't allow docs to write for that anymore.