Packaging isn’t the same, though. They’re being honest (in a capitalist sort of way). The pseudoephedrine states decongestion (because that’s what it does when taken properly), while the phenylephrine states congestion (because that’s what it causes when taken).
Yeah but when you read the effects they are both supposed to relieve “congestion”.
Stuff like this makes me happy i never used stuff like this when I was sick. I’m over 40 and I can only think of a handful of times I’ve used anything, even stuff like ibuprofen.
Kroger be lazy? or am I getting wooshed
That’s my first guess. Why bother changing the whole design when you can just edit the text?
Not sure what the reason is. But for some reason, the packaging is almost identical.
It’s cheaper.
Very happy to live in Canada/Ontario where I could just pick up a basket of pseudoephedrine if I really wanted to. land of the free
The meth problem replaced the crack problem and is now an opiod problem.
“I think it’s time for us to find out who’s really behind all of this…”
pulls mask off opiod problem
“I knew it! It was untreated mental health/public healthcare issue all along!”
Maybe we could solve it by heavily criminalizing mental health crises and banning things like safe injection sites??
Also, get someone with political power in the mental health professions to highly stigmatize drug users as party animals and lacking self-control so that they are further pushed away from legitimate help when they are treated as liars and manipulators by mental health clinicians. Include the idea that if anyone self-medicated due to a legitimate mental health condition after being pushed away from the health system by an overzealous provider that thought the person was merely seeking drugs, that provider was right all along!
This guy politics 👍
It’s such a shame the US can’t get tylenol 1. We have a fine system in place for Pseduophedrine. High limit, simple signature, watch and chase. Barely bothers anyone.
Sometimes certain things need the help of a small amount of opiates, but is also a waste of everyone’s time to go to a doctor for.
They’re just matching the branding of the competition, “Sudafed PE Sinus Congestion” to confuse customers.
Edit: Apologies, basically a TLDR of banana’s response
Ones for sinus congestion, the others for sinus decongestion. Have I got that right?
No… read what the supposed effects are for both of them.
One drug works, one has been fooling people for a while. The entire cold & flu aisle is a scam. All you really need for OTC is Acetaminophen/Ibuprofen, pseudophedrine and diphenhydramine. Menthol and the like are also like aromatics and lozenges are helpful, but they can be found cheaper…
Don’t even get me started on nyquil, might as well burn money because you don’t like the look of it.
So phenylephrine actually does work, the problem is the delivery. When injected or as a suppository, it works as labeled. When taken orally, your saliva and stomach acid break it down before it can have any therapeutic effect.
The oral stuff needs to disappear, but the drug actually does work. Just not that way.
Acetaminophen
Which is an horrendous drug that’s extremely toxic for your liver, easy to overdose on, and only recently known to need a lower dosage for safe usage by women. However, it’s the US’ go to drug because of a commercial dispute and marketing campaign against metamizole, which may perhaps once in a blue moon if you’re very unlucky and maybe perhaps predisposed cause immunological complications.
Acetaminophen is seriously scary to be taken as lightly as it is in certain countries. Do not buy it simply due to a cold or flu.
I was told metamizole is even rougher on the stomach than Ibuprofen, which is why it wasn’t used.
It’s safe if you follow the label
https://www.health.harvard.edu/pain/acetaminophen-safety-be-cautious-but-not-afraid
“Why is the packaging the exact same”
It isn’t? Yes, the graphics are identical, because why would Kroger bother spending money on a graphics artist to make two different packages? They don’t care.
The ingredient list on the front is very clearly not the same and tells you exactly what’s in it.
Maybe you carefully scrutinize each package before you buy it, making sure you’re not buying something almost identical to the other package which has different ingredients, but most people don’t have time to do that when they go shopping. And companies know it. Don’t defend deceptive practices.
I don’t know how you buy drugs but I pretty much exclusively look for the list of active ingredients and quantity.
So, for the 50% of people who lack critical thinking skills or good eyesight, sucks to be them, right?
Do you really check every single time? Have you never grabbed what you thought was a product you’ve bought before only to take it home and realize what you grabbed was something different but with similar packaging?
I sure as hell have. Even with OTC drugs. I’ve grabbed what I thought was one type of Tylenol while I was in a hurry and it turned out that Tylenol had put out something else in really similar packaging.
I really don’t think people should have to look at the ingredients of a product, even an OTC drug, every time they buy it just to make sure it’s the same one they’ve bough the last 5 times.
I sure as hell have. Even with OTC drugs. I’ve grabbed what I thought was one type of Tylenol while I was in a hurry and it turned out that Tylenol had put out something else in really similar packaging.
But the brand name is an umbrella that covers lots of different products. Tylenol is a great example because there are so many different types of Tylenol out there with different dosage, different forms (capsules, pills, tablets, gel coated versions of those), and with different combinations of other ingredients. It’s something that is important to get right and check every time.
Especially with cold medicines, where different combinations of decongestants, expectorants, cough suppressants, and fever reducers are often sold in the same drug. You can’t just rely on brand names, because those will sell a bunch of different products under that brand. There’s like 5 kinds of Mucinex and 5 kinds of Robitussin, and that’s not even getting into the different flavors or children’s versions.
The problem here is that oral phenylephrine is itself an ineffective drug that was only grandfathered in because it was commonly used before the FDA was created. It shouldn’t be sold at all (and the FDA is in the process of revoking its existing approval).
I really don’t think people should have to look at the ingredients of a product, even an OTC drug, every time they buy it
I disagree. You just never know how things change, including things like reformulations, like when infant Tylenol was reformulated to a lower concentration. This stuff changes and consumers need to be on top of it.
Expecting consumers to be the ones to figure these things out has never worked. I can’t believe you don’t know that. That’s exactly how so much homeopathic crap gets put on drugstore shelves.
If you’re asking for a big fundamental rework of the labeling requirements that already require the labels to prominently print the active ingredient on the front, and have a standardized Drug Facts label (including active ingredients, inactive ingredients, dosages, use, side effects, contraindications, etc.), then this example isn’t a good one. All the different Tylenols, Robitussins, Mucinexes, Advils, and NyQuils out there are probably a better example of what you’re talking about, but those are also clearly labeled.
Or if you’re advocating for, like, an end to over the counter drugs, and requiring a prescription for everything, then I guess that’s a position. But bypassing a doctor is going to require a little bit of effort from a
doctorconsumer, and simply reading a label isn’t, in my opinion, a huge ask.(Edited to fix mistake)
It’s still actively and deliberately misleading.
These two comments are incompatible. It can’t be, “they just didn’t hire another artist for a second package” as well as “deliberately misleading”.
What makes you say it’s deliberately misleading, rather than saving money?
It costs just about nothing to change a colour.
Companies likely also don’t hire “artists”, they get their marketing department to do this, and those are hired anyway. Might as well put them to work.
Man, I once woke up and couldn’t figure out why my coffee was total shit one morning.
Turns out, the clearly stated HALF AND HALF I bought the day before was the fat-free version.
The label was exactly as different as the pic. Same color, same logo, fine print in a color that made it look like a bullshit swirly design along the edge of the color box below the title of the product saying fat free
HALF AND HALF HAS TO HAVE FAT OR IT ISNT FUCKING HALF AND HALF. You gonna fuckin whip non-fat half and half? Hell no you’re not, the shit that makes it whip ain’t in there
The company is counting on you mistaking the garbage product that is most likely some form of repurposed industrial waste and nearly free for them to produce, for the thing you’re actually looking for. I mean Christ, invert the colors. Grab a different clipart. Any fucking goon with an iphone could edit those labels enough to be easily distinguishable in 15 seconds, counting the time the thing takes to ‘airdrop’ it
Just to add to the confusion, the “pseudo” drug is the one that really works.
Now does anyone know, if I can crush my old PE pills and snort them, will that be the “effective nasal spray” they’re talking about?
Yes, you can. I have no idea if they’d do anything but you definitely can.
At least once.
well if it’s any consolation, ephedrine is a decongestant too 🤪
all this war on drugs man… no real drug maker would buy 100 packs of medication to make meth, both because it’s extremely sus and also just plain expensive, they’ll just do it another way / in another country
This ignores the reality that it really was happening, like all the time. Look up “shake’n’bake meth”.
Smurfs were absolutely a thing in the Appalachians.
I dont know what people are complaining about? One signature and you get 48 pills of pseudo. How often do people get colds? A 48 pack had lasted me years. I am surprised there isn’t even an official limit, and it’s more than your body can safely handle in a month…
Do people really like being strung out on pseduophedrine like Trump?
They don’t buy it, they steal it.
Wait, they’re finally admitting that Phenylephrine is completely and utterly useless!? Finally, I feel vindicated.
In oral form, yea. But in a nasal spray, I’ve never had another drug clear up my congestion faster. It’s stupidly effective when directly applied to the mucus membrane.
Only useless when used as an oral drug. Works great as a spray. Turns out inhaling stuff and swallowing stuff are different things.
RIP to anyone who was told to inhale 8 glasses of water a day.
Shove a couple in your nostrils, voila congestion!
So for clarity:
- Pseudoephedrine HCL is an effective medication, and can also be used to make Methamphetamines so is now more restricted although still over the counter. It is what is in the branded medicine Sudafed, but is basically a naturally occurring drug.
- Phenylephrine HCL is not an effective medication in tablet form, and the US FDA has decided recently to remove it from sale after studies showed it performs no better than placebo. This is what had been in the branded medicine Sudafed PE, and was a patented drug in 1927.
So one is an effective generic naturally discovered drug that cannot be patented, and the other is an ineffective drug that although off patent now has been pushed by the pharmaceutical industry for nearly 100 years. In fairness, nasal spray Phenylephrine is likely to be effective - it is the tablets that are ineffective.
The packaging is likely the same to deliberately confuse consumers, in the same way the original major brands are Sudafed and Sudafed PE. Once medications have to be bought from a pharmacist behind the counter rather than just taken off a shelf it sells less well, so better for the Pharamceutical industry to ensure people think they’re the same thing even though one is useless.
And yet the meth problem doesn’t seem to be going away…
Because the restriction was never going to reduce drug use. It does nothing to address addiction or treatment or the import of drugs.
Where it was effective was reducing the number of local meth cooks in states where restrictions have been the tightest. Some people still cross state lines to buy pseudoephedrine, but then why not just cook in a state where it’s available?
Make no mistake, the purpose of these restrictions are not to protect addicts from addictive substances. It was to protect property values for neighbors who don’t want to live in a cloud of piss.
Make no mistake, the purpose of these restrictions are not to protect addicts from addictive substances. It was to protect property values for neighbors who don’t want to live in a cloud of piss.
Legalizing and then restricting the manufacture to industrial-zoned property (just like other smelly stuff like paper mills and whatnot) would’ve accomplished the same thing.
Ah, but then youd5have created competition for the protected corporations.
I keep hearing about a meth and fentanyl epidemic, but as far as I’m aware, I haven’t met one person in my entire life that uses either of them.
you’ve probably met people in recovery. people don’t really broadcast it.
Come here to Terre Haute, Indiana. You’ll meet a whole lot of people addicted to meth and various opioids.
It’s always fun when they decide to direct traffic.
You have met people that use one or both, or have in the past.
It’s not even a “big city” problem. Both of the above are ripping rural towns apart as well.
At least 1 in 50 of your coworkers are using fentanyl or abusing opiates.
Also, meth is still a big problem in the gay community unfortunately.
But it’s just a bad scene all around when conisder like 10% of everyone abuses alcohol in some way. It all seems systemic, I wish life were better.
God I love captialism
One of them is also for decongestion and the other is for congestion.
They should really start calling them anti-rape whistles
So… you blow it constantly unless you’re being actively raped?
All these people talking about the difference between phenylephrine and pseudoephedrine and I’m like “shouldn’t the medicine against Sinus Decongestion use a nasal congestant instead”?
