Johnathon Morrison’s mother helped get tianeptine banned in Alabama. But she says it makes her “sick” it is still being sold in stores across the U.S.
Kristi Terry keeps replaying the last time she saw her son Johnathon Morrison alive.
The 19-year-old scholarship student came into her bedroom on the night of Feb. 20, 2019 and asked if it was OK if he cooked some pizza rolls; he didn’t want to hog them from his younger sister, who was a fussy eater.
Terry, 41, and her husband found it odd that he was asking permission.
“We were like ‘you don’t have to ask to cook something," she said. In hindsight, she wishes she’d gotten up to see if he was feeling alright. She wonders if he was feeling sick at that point and was trying to settle his stomach with food.
The next morning Terry and her 15-year-old daughter found Morrison unresponsive in his bedroom in Trafford, Alabama. Paramedics spent an hour trying to revive him, but they couldn’t. Next to his body was a half-eaten plate of pizza rolls and a nearly empty bottle of tianeptine pills, an unapproved drug known as “gas station heroin” because of its addictive effects on some users.
What even is the point of having separate categories of prescription and OTC drugs if there’s nothing stopping unapproved drugs from being sold over the counter?
Another part of the problem is that these unapproved ‘health supplements’ are often not even checked to see if they contain what they claim to contain. Unsurprisingly, some of them contain prescription pharmaceuticals. And even when it is discovered that those products do have them, they aren’t always taken off the market.
https://www.snexplores.org/article/many-food-supplements-unlawfully-contain-drugs
It’s nuts.
But God forbid we let the FDA have a look at these supplements, because if we did, the Pyramid Scheme Industrial Complex would collapse and with it the economy of Utah and the finances of the LDS Church.
They tried to pass a bill regulating them in the early 90s. All the supplements companies took out ads screaming that doctors were trying to take your vitamins away. Very unpopular, bill went down in flames.
Like no, doctors just don’t want people getting amphetamines in their creatine supplement. Or unexpectedly getting St John’s wart in some supplement that doesn’t list it as an ingredient, suddenly causing severe and dangerous interactions with multiple medications the person is taking. It says a lot about the supplement industry that they fight tooth and nail against any regulation that would require them to accurately report what’s in the bottle. They can basically just make it up out of thin air as it is. Tons of supplement makers with expensive “proprietary blends” where they don’t even attempt to show what’s inside, then market them toward incurable diseases like alzheimers, very carefully avoiding the name of the disease in advertising, and taking money out of their pockets in exchange for false hope. Looking at you neuriva. If your blend actually works, test it, patent it, become billionaires (they won’t because it doesn’t).
And some being sold are just straight up harmful. You can hop on Amazon right now and buy 250 mg /pill vitamin b6 supplements. If they’re reporting that accurately, that’s a toxic dose that could be harmful to your health and even cause neuropathy (ironically many who take it are hoping it will help with neuropathy, but that’s only true if you’re deficient, and you don’t need anywhere near that amount even if deficient).
where downsides
Only upside land ahead
I the FDA can’t even keep up with trying to approve legitimate pharmaceutical drugs, let’s not task them with looking at random s*** too.
Give them more resources then.
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again; strip the army and arm the FDA. Lead in your cinnamon pills? Sniped.
No quarter.
My country made basically that in the 50’s, now we have one of the few Blue Zones in the world
How about they just investigate and prosecute.
Take away profits, business licenses and import licenses.
This seems less snipy than my plan. Can they at least be armed?
No.
Why do Americans think you can shoot all your problems away?
Welcome to research chemicals. They invent new drugs and sell them wherever until the DEA puts them on the restricted or regulated schedule, then they just make a new drug that has just a little different chemical compound but still essentially does the same thing as the last one that got banned and start the process all over. It’s a legal loop hole for selling drugs.
The worst part is that each replacement generation is almost always worse than the predecessor. Just take the cannibinoids, JWH-018 was sketchy, but anything after that was Hella sketchy and had some terrible side effects.
I think the situation blurs with “natural” things
Yeah I always thought over the counter meant it was checked before being put behind the counter unlike stuff on the floor
Because the rules are made up as the ruling class goes along.
These aren’t being sold to treat anything. They are just sold with flashy labels but no claims.
Historically OTC drugs were just drugs that existed before the fda was formed, and therefore were exempted from the rules. OTC drugs are almost always less regulated, less tested, and have had less research done on them. Hence the whole thing with allergy meds last year.
Allergy meds last year?
https://www.npr.org/2023/09/12/1199159009/a-popular-nasal-decongestant-doesnt-actually-relieve-congestion-fda-advisers-say
https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/fact-sheets/2017/03/regulation-of-over-the-counter-drug-products-should-be-streamlined
oh shoot I forgot about that!