Pseudoephedrine Letter

[asterroc]

As promised, here's the letter that I'm going to send to my congressmen about pseudoephedrine. Feel free to circulate and spread at will. It's around two pages in length, so you may want to shorten it for greater impact, but I really want all the details.

Honorable ******,

I am writing to you today about the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act of 2005 (CEMA), an amendment to the PATRIOT Act that makes the purchase of the most effective over the counter (OTC) decongestant, pseudoephedrine, in moderate quantities an act of terrorism. The act first came into effect on September 30th, 2006, and as such we are currently in the first allergy season under the act, and its impact upon allergy sufferers is only now coming to light. The strict limitations on the amount of pseudoephedrine that may be purchased at a time represents an undue burden upon allergy sufferers nationwide. Considering that the National Institute of Health has authored studies showing that 54.3% of the US population suffers from allergies, chances good are that you yourself are negatively impacted by CEMA, as well as your family members and more than half of your constituents.

Pseudoephedrine is the best OTC decongestant out there, is the main ingredient in Sudafed, and is an important additional ingredient in many antihistamines such as Claritin and Alavert. Because pseudoephedrine can be processed to create methamphetamine, Congress decided in 2005 to pass CEMA as an amendment to the PATRIOT Act and now classifies the purchase of too much pseudoephedrine as a terrorist act. The problem is that the limits set on the drug are too restrictive: a daily 24-hour dose is 240mg, the law allows the purchase of 3.5g per day (equivalent to 14 days' dosage) or 9g in a 30-day period (equivalent to 37 days' dosage), or 7g in a 30-day period (29 days' dosage) should you purchase online.

These restrictively low numbers mean that allergy sufferers (such as myself) must carefully plan trips to pharmacies to obtain sufficient amounts to sustain us through each month. As the limits apply to ALL drugstores and pharmacies combined, we cannot hop from one pharmacy to another. It necessitates extra trips to the pharmacy for me - a matter of time, convenience, and gasoline consumption. It means that I cannot stock up when they are on sale and thus have to spend more money than I would otherwise. It means that should I forget to buy some pseudoephedrine when I can, I will do without, and like many drugs its effectiveness decreases when it has not been taken for a number of consecutive days.

Allergy sufferers' needs can be addressed by modifying the law to allow higher limits of pseudoephedrine purchase within each day and 30-day period, without significantly impacting its effectiveness in fighting methamphetamine. I would recommend increasing the daily limit to 7.2g/day (30 days' dosage) and monthly limit to 22g/30-days (90 days' dosage). The single case that has been prosecuted to date, of William Fousse, involved the purchase of 29g within a 30-day period, and as such modifying the law as I recommend would still allow the prosecution of the individual in question, and would represent a significant improvement for allergy sufferers.

Thank you for your time, and I hope that you will consider authoring or supporting an amendment to CEMA that would allow higher limits on the purchase of pseudoephedrine, relieving an undue burden on the 54.3% of your constituents that suffer from allergies.

To find your federal legislators, you can use the following webpages

American Astronomical Society (type in your zip+4, or address)
http://www.aas.org/policy/aas.bios.html

National Education Association (insert your zip code where it says xxxxx below)
http://www3.capwiz.com/nea/mail/compose/?&azip=xxxxx&mailid=custom

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ETA: Yay, bandwagons!

ETAT (Edited This After That): And now I'm famous.

Comments

[q10.livejournal.com]

technically, it's only an ingredient in som Claritin formulation - mainly those with a ‘D’ in their names.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Hence my saying "additional ingredient in some". Claritin and Alavert are used as the brand names here, not the formulation names.

[meig.livejournal.com]

The whole thing is so stupid. Just legalize (and tax) drugs, and let Natural Selection take over. Less idiots in the breeding population that way then, too :P

[meig.livejournal.com]

BTW, it's a very well written letter :)

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Thanks. ^_^

I'm not convinced that drug use is a self-limiting behavior. People who use drugs and alcohol are more likely to engage in other risky behavior, such as unprotected sex. Whether they will kill themselves from an OD or STD before they spawn is the real question. I suspect that in fact there is a certain level of drug use that would increase reproduction without killing the parents too fast to have it happen, so that a certain level of drug use is evolutionarily desirable.

[marquiswildbill.livejournal.com]

It's not a self limiting behavior at all. Drug abuse will certainly shorten the lifespan of the abuser, but the odds of death from an adverse reaction or side effect (related disease, jumping off a bridge, hitting a phone poll on a motorcycle) before they have had a chance at breeding is very low. Just look at the Irish, I doubt I could even name 5% of my father's close relatives (cousins, aunts and uncles).
Back to the topic at hand, it's a very good letter. I'll probably use it as a template for one, but first I want to find some studies on the efficacy of pseudoephedrine vs phenylephrine so I can make some nifty graphs.
I look forward to the day when they have to stop banning stuff because a large number of people realize how easy it is to make a huge number of powerful intoxicants from unwatched chemicals, or unwatched biological sources (like DMT, a more powerful and shorter acting analog of LSD, can be isolated from one of the most common weeds in America).

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

I'd love to see what you come up with for graphs. In my final version I found a statistic from the NIH that 54.3% of the US population suffers from allergies, so I threw that in. Chances are, of the three congressmen I wrote, at least one of them has allergies him/herself. I wonder if I can find that info out anywhere...

[marquiswildbill.livejournal.com]

The efficacy data should be easily found in a med chem or physiology journal. You could probably get a good indication of where to look by asking members of the chemistry and biology departments (anyone with a degree in med chem, physiology, biochem or a number of related fields whould be able to help you find good places to look journal wise).
I doubt you can find out how your congressperson's allergies are easily. I've met my house rep a few times (he's great, he was the assistant director of princeton plasma physics before going into politics, but the funding was getting cut so badly they almost had to close so he figured if you can't beat 'em join 'em), and I am sure I will meet him again and ask him. As well as thanking him for sponsoring ammendments to the PELL grant making it more accessible for people like me who have families and have to work fulltime but want to continue going to school but need aid to do so.