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‘Right to Repair for Your Body’: The Rise of DIY, Pirated Medicine
(www.404media.co)
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this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2024
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I firmly think this would be a boon for many people; owning one of these is likely a lifeline that even small town physicians could utilize to dispense drugs freely or cheaply to patients in need.
This is something that I think small-town pharmacies could use to create compounds in cases of drug shortages. I think tools and programs and small labs like what are discussed in the article are a positive force for good; and that they should be not only allowed, but encouraged, for many drugs that are expensive, unavailable to someone in need and can be readily synthesized safely with a basic college level of chemistry training by someone in a pharmacy.
I think the potential risks and downsides are small right now; and I think more of it should be encouraged gently so that we can find out quickly what the flaws and limitations are so that we can put regulatory guardrails around it so that people do not harm themselves.
Yeah, one of the meds they talk about making is Vyvanse. That's having a serious national shortage right now due to a combination of the DEA and corporate greed. It's illegal for compounding pharmacies to make it but there's no technical reason they couldn't. Same for lots of this stuff.
So uh yeah as we all know a lot of amphetamines have already been "open source" for a long time.
And we also know the DEA really doesn't approve of private production... Vyvanse itself only really was created as a produg because of their control of the amphetamine market and their desire for products with lower abuse potential.
If we could get the DEA out of the way anyways, it would make more sense to just make dextroamphetamine as it's simple, cheap and effective.
It's funny because a lot of people really like Vyvanse (that is: lisdexamphetamine) better than the alternatives. It was only made because the DEA wanted fewer people to take regular amphetamines and then a bunch of people responded well to it and the DEA went "wait! Not like that!"
Anyway, it's on generic now. The only reason there's a shortage is the DEA.
(Before you say "I'm not in the US and we have a shortage, too!" the drug companies killed all their production lines because the DEA basically gave them an excuse to try to force people off Vyvanse and onto meds that were still under patent.)
Depending on how Vyvanse is Scheduled; it might be legal to privately make. If it's not scheduled like a standard amphetamine; the DEA is powerless.
I have a sneaking suspicion it's not illegal to compound this stuff. But IANAL; and it doesn't matter if the DEA thinks it is and will hassle anyone trying.
I am not a lawyer but as far as I know: it super isn't. It's also illegal for compounding pharmacies to make, where I live.
I'm not accounting for State laws; which may in fact be stricter. I'm talking about Federal Laws which might not explicitly forbid such things; so long as they're done in an actually safe manner by professionals.
But, as I said before, if the DEA believes it has the power to stop that none-the-less; that's what they will do, without respect to if the law is actually legally unclear or borderline. Unfortunately many pharmaceutical places don't care to invite the wrath of the DEA; even if what they're doing could be considered permissible; so long as they do not synthesize an exact drug that the Feds specifically name as a controlled substance.
Again; IANAL either. But I do think there's a lot of room for small compounding pharmacies to synthesize various drugs to meet a patient's needs quickly while waiting for proper shipments to arrive. There's lots of compounds that are life-sustaining that do not fall under the DEA banner of authority.