<story><title>The Uselessness of Phenylephrine</title><url>https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/uselessness-phenylephrine</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>p_l</author><text>The lack of availability of proper pseudoephedrine in USA led to situation where there are papers describing how to turn &lt;i&gt;methamphetamine&lt;/i&gt; into pseudoephedrine, not the other way around.&lt;p&gt;With explanation in abstract that its easier to buy meth than pseudoephedrine.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>techsupporter</author><text>&amp;gt; With explanation in abstract that its easier to buy meth than pseudoephedrine.&lt;p&gt;People may laugh at this, as they should since it is an absurd situation, but this isn&amp;#x27;t entirely wrong.&lt;p&gt;Neither my wife or I drive and during the pandemic she gave up her license after getting an appointment at the DOL was difficult.  Both of us carry US passport cards as our ID.&lt;p&gt;This has resulted in several situations where we&amp;#x27;ve been turned down for purchasing restricted items like alcohol or drugs containing pseudoephedrine, particularly the latter, because a passport card can&amp;#x27;t be scanned by the usual point of sale systems.  There are a couple of places in Seattle that are happy to accept a passport card but even at them it&amp;#x27;s sometimes been dependent on who is working the counter that day.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Uselessness of Phenylephrine</title><url>https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/uselessness-phenylephrine</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>p_l</author><text>The lack of availability of proper pseudoephedrine in USA led to situation where there are papers describing how to turn &lt;i&gt;methamphetamine&lt;/i&gt; into pseudoephedrine, not the other way around.&lt;p&gt;With explanation in abstract that its easier to buy meth than pseudoephedrine.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>reincarnate0x14</author><text>It would be interesting to see if there were any reliable stats on how many, if any, people were caught by the ID check laws trying to manufacture from pseudoephedrine, because even at the height of the meth panic that engendered the laws something like 95% of pseudoephedrine outside of a handful of high-risk areas was very obviously not being used for any illegal purposes.</text></comment>