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Amid a national shortage, the US Adderall black market is booming (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 2 years ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world

55 comments fedilink hide all child comments

With pharmacies unable to fill prescriptions, many ADHD patients are turning to Craigslist to buy illicit pills online

Peruse an online marketplace like Craigslist, and you’ll find coded classified ads for “Study Help” and “Study Hall”, or calls looking for a “Study Buddy”. Despite the scholarly language, these aren’t people looking for pre-final cram session. They’re plugs for Adderall: the trade name for a combination of amphetamine salts long prescribed as a first-choice treatment for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). It’s a drug that is, of late, in perilously short supply.

The US National Institute for Mental Health estimates that ADHD affects 4.4% of adults between the ages of 18 and 44. The number of adults treated for ADHD has increased in recent decades, attributable to the wider destigmatization of diagnosing the disorder in adults as well as the Covid-19 pandemic and its knockback effects on adult mental health. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found that adult prescriptions for ADHD medication increased by 7.9% between 2020 and 2021, compared with a 1.4% average annual increase between 2016 and 2020. In 2021, doctors authorized in excess of 30m prescriptions for Adderall, serving nearly 4 million patients.

But over the past two years, many of patients have been unable to procure their prescription, due to manufacturing shortfalls. With the delta between demand and supply widening, some adults with diagnosed ADHD are forced to forsake CVS, Rite Aid, Walgreens and other drug retailers, and turn elsewhere.

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[–] gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world 21 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I wonder how much the opioid lawsuit settlements' rules for drug distributors and pharmacists is driving this

The distributors use algorithms that cap the quantities of controlled substances a pharmacy can sell in a month. Before the settlement, pharmacists said, they could explain to a distributor the reason for a surge in demand and still receive medications past their limits. Now the caps appear to be more rigid: Drugs are cut off with no advance notice or rapid recourse. As a condition of the settlement, distributors cannot tell pharmacies what the thresholds are.

...

But some doctors said that legitimate prescriptions were being caught in the dragnet, while pharmacists said they were declining to dispense some medications for fear of setting off triggers.

Distributors can investigate and resolve red flags if they are satisfied by a pharmacy’s explanation, but they can also stop supplying them with controlled drugs altogether.

Swept up in the scrutiny are college students far from home trying to fill their Adderall prescriptions, patients in rural areas where it is customary to drive long distances for medical care, and hospice providers that rely on local pharmacies for controlled substances instead of on a specialized supplier that would be exempt from the limits, The Times found.

Restrictions on controlled substances had already been ratcheted up for years, as concerns about abuse grew during the opioid epidemic. More recently, shortages of some drugs, such as Adderall, which is used to treat A.D.H.D., made those medications hard to get. The settlement with distributors appears to have tightened supplies even more.

[–] BobGnarley@lemm.ee 31 points 2 years ago

Yupp the DEA purposefully fucks with the supply chain which, like this article we are commenting on shows, drives people to the black market. That same black market that the DEA is given a blank check to help "take care of".

[–] sapient_cogbag@infosec.pub 12 points 2 years ago

The war on drugs is just shit urgh. Fucking over people's lives, both directly ("you put something in your body that the government didnt approve of so suffer"), and indirectly ("other people put this stuff in their body in ways we don't approve of, so even though with doctor's suggestion we have decided you're allowed to have a little bit for medical reasons and hence know it is probably vital you have it, we're just going to make it difficult, frustrating, or impossible to get and ruin big parts of your life in case you're secretly using it in ways we dont approve of") nya

It's wrecking people's lives by presumption of guilt - or at least, not presumption of innocence - for a stupid "crime" (where at least some of the committers are also likely to be self medicating ADHD lmao).

I have ADHD (and have medication for it, though i dont use it 100% of the time every day, but do have it most times). I have methylphenidate, which is a bit different to adderal though its still a stimulant.

Honestly the side effects are not great (really don't understand why someone would have this recreationally at any higher dose), but I don't actually give a shit if soneone does consume it either recreationally or for uni work (though stimulants in non adhd people worsen problem solving skills while on it, but the fact people use it for studying and still benefit really to me illustrates a problem with the way things are taught and assessed as well as the high sociopolitical pressure for grades) >.<.

I actually get a bit irritated sometimes, cause a lot of adhd folks see these shortages and blame "illegal users" rather than bullshit war on drugs policy that violates bodily autonomy.

At least as far as I am concerned I dont think people using these things illegally is "wrong" - I don't see why it's any of my business even if I don't think it's the greatest idea or get why given the side effects (might be a bit different for adderal since it has some slightly different effects to what I have nya) - especially when some of them may be self-medicating, as per this article.