Friday, July 31, 2009

Why We Don't Have Addiction-Free Cold Pills

Methland, Lobbying, and Why We Don't Have an Addiction-Free Decongestant

Category: Drugs
Posted on: July 30, 2009 9:48 AM, by Mike

I just finished reading Methland by Nick Reding. While the book focuses on the relationship between methamphetamines and the socioeconomic disintegration of rural areas*, this section about the interplay between lobbying and the failure to develop and produce an amphetamine that has decongestant activity but doesn't raise heart rate or possess addictive side effects was truly shocking (italics mine):

Mirror imaging is a process whereby a chemical's molecular structure is reversed, moving, for example, electrons from the bottom of a certain ring to the top, and vice versa. Pseudoephedrine, ephedrine, and methamphetamine are already near mirror images of one another. To make meth from ephedrine, it is necessary to remove a single oxygen atom from the outer electron ring. Thus ephedrine and methamphetamine not only look the same under a mass spectrometer, but both dilate the alveoli in the lungs and shrink blood vessels in the nose-hence ephedrine's use as a decongestant while raising blood pressure and releasing adrenaline. The key difference is that meth, unlike ephedrine, prompts wide-scale releases of the neurotransmitters dopamine and epinephrine..... More..........

http://scienceblogs.com/mikethemadbiologist/2009/07/methland_lobbying_and_why_we_d.php

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