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Comment by trhway

6 hours ago

>He points out that “old” meth was made from ephedrine and that “new” meth is made from a chemical called Phenylacetone or P2P

the new is just the old that came back. The old meth, "biker meth", was P2P. Then was ephedrine, and with a crackdown on ephedrine - back to P2P.

Another noticeable thing - the recent shortage of ADHD medication while supposedly illegal meth production has been growing. Demand is present in both cases while the capitalism model of responding with supply seems to work very well only in one.

In the former case, you have government artificially suppressing supply and acting to dissuade pharmacies from keeping almost any extra stock, which is unfortunate.

> Another noticeable thing - the recent shortage of ADHD medication while supposedly illegal meth production has been growing. Demand is present in both cases while the capitalism model of responding with supply seems to work very well only in one.

Capitalism isn’t the problem at all with prescription medications. The annual production amounts are regulated by the government. There has been an explosion in demand for ADHD prescriptions between the way it’s trending on social media and the recent shifts in how easily prescriptions are handed out.

I don’t agree that inducing artificial supply shortages is the right way to regulate it, but there is no “capitalism bad” story here. If anything this is a good example of how central command and control of production doesn’t work.