[Nursie]

Here in Australia we have the same restrictions on pseudoephedrine, possibly worse ones (you have to show ID and it gets recorded centrally so you don’t just pharmacy-hop)

And it’s done nothing. Hasn’t affected availability. Hasn’t cut down on illicit lab operations. Nothing.

People will say “It has cut down on the amount of pseudoephedrine going to illegal meth operations”, as if that in itself is a useful outcome instead of utterly meaningless.

[cwsx]

When I lived in Sydney I had a few friends that frequently bought Rikodeine (dihydrocodeine cough syrup), which is also meant to be tracked via pharmacists recording IDs. My friends knew what pharmacies didn't bother to track it, normally if you were a 'repeat' customer and knew the pharmacist. They were able to buy 10~ bottles in a day from 8 - 10 pharmacies, repeating every few days. This was also in Sydney's central cbd so there's a pharmacy every other block.

I assume the situation is similar with pseudoephedrine, though the drug class/restrictions may be different.

[Nursie]

Interesting you can get rikodeine at all, given that even mild (8mg) codeine tablets are now prescription only here. That stuff (from a quick search) appears to still be available OTC.

As someone who has always used low-dose codeine+whatever analgesics when I have had a bad cold or migraine, I resent these being removed from the market recently as well. People can tell me that paracetamol and ibuprofen are just as effective until they're blue in the face, but that little bit of opiate uplift when I'm feeling like absolute shit was very psychologically helpful... Oh well, this is the world we live in.