[tptacek]

The problem with Sudafed isn't that it's ineffective or unsafe for its users; it's that it has the same or higher abuse potential as codeine cough drops did. We took codeine completely off the market, but you can just go buy Sudafed whenever you want.

[AnthonyMouse]

Significant numbers of people are not going to the pharmacy and buying Sudafed because they have a cold and consequently getting addicted to Sudafed, which is what had been happening with codeine.

It's clearly because you can make methamphetamine out of it. But you can also make methamphetamine out of other things which limiting access to cold medicine demonstrably hasn't prevented.

[tptacek]

When Sudafed was put behind the counter, it was likely that a plurality of all Sudafed purchases in California were abusive.

[AnthonyMouse]

More than likely, I would think, since plurality just means more than one.

But the justification is not the same. People were going to the drug store for cough drops and unintentionally ending up addicted to opioids. Nobody was going to the drug store for a decongestant and accidentally making meth out of it, and the number of people getting addicted to pseudoephedrine itself was neither large enough to justify the change, nor its explicitly stated rationale. Nor an effective means to bring it about if the claim that showing an ID isn't a burden is to be believed because it would have no effect on the small minority of people who might go to the pharmacy for a stuffy nose and thereby become dependent on pseudoephedrine, since they would still get it.

Meanwhile the stated rational of limiting availability of methamphetamine hasn't gone well either.

This before we even mention that the OTC replacement, phenylephrine, is not only ineffective, it's a more dangerous drug than pseudoephedrine from a cardiovascular perspective and the switch has plausibly killed some people.