Content about Pseudoephedrine

AUDIO Q&A: DSN caught up with Greg Bradley — president and CEO of Advantage Consumer Healthcare, a full turnkey solution center for over-the-counter medicines reaching the market — for an overview of the new marketing and sales solution company as it has recently brought to market OraSure Technologies' OraQuick Advance, a take-home HIV test kit that the Food and Drug Administration recently approved for the self

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Missouri attorney general Chris Koster joined Jackson County prosecutor Jean Peters Baker and leaders from the Missouri Pharmacy Association and the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office on Wednesday to launch the state’s new voluntary retail Anti-Smurfing Campaign.

WASHINGTON — Prescription-only pseudoephedrine laws result in well more than $278 million in additional burdens to taxpayers, according to a study published by Matrix Global Advisors on Monday. 

WASHINGTON — Patients around the country "strongly" oppose laws that have been proposed to change popular OTC drugs to prescription-only, according to a new survey.

The survey, conducted online by Harris Interactive on behalf of the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, polled 2,020 adults in January who had asthma, allergies, cold, cough or flu in the past 12 months and who had purchased OTC drugs for at least one condition during that time.

SAN RAFAEL, Calif. — Pharmacists Planning Services, Inc. earlier this month filed a Citizen's Petition with the Food and Drug Administration calling to move St. John's Wort, a mood enhancing supplement, behind the counter. 

WASHINGTON — The Consumer Healthcare Products Association last week applauded Ohio Gov. John Kasich for signing into law House Bill 334, an anti-methamphetamine bill authored by Reps. Terry Johnson, R-Portsmouth, and Danny Bupb, R-West Union. With the new law, Ohio now becomes the 25th state to adopt real-time, stop-sale technology known as the National Precursor Log Exchange.

LEXINGTON, Ky. — Gov. Steve Beshear on Monday announced the launch of a privately funded, statewide campaign aimed at increasing public awareness about "smurfing," the illegal process of buying products containing pseudoephedrine on behalf of methamphetamine criminals. The goal of the Anti-Smurfing Campaign is to inform potential smurfers and the general public — through signage displayed at pharmacy sales counters — that smurfing is a serious criminal offense that can result in criminal charges and possibly time in jail. 

PALATINE, Ill. — Acura Pharmaceuticals on Wednesday shared with analysts details on its launch strategy of Nexafed, a pseudoephedrine formulated such that it inhibits the diversion to methamphetamnine. 

While the picture of a new Rx-to-OTC switch paradigm is being painted with a broad stroke brush, already there are two divergent pathways emerging around what that new paradigm landscape might look like. 


OTC manufacturers have been framing the new paradigm within the existing two-drug-class system, suggesting that the diagnostic tools that already are available in the marketplace significantly could help expand which medicines are considered appropriate in the OTC space.


Retail pharmacists, on the other hand, are advocating for the creation of a third class of drugs.


WHAT IT MEANS AND WHY IT'S IMPORTANT — There is an important distinction to be made here, one that could place pharmacy operators and over-the-counter manufacturers on opposite sides of the aisle. And that's the call for a codified third class of drugs, made more or less by both the National Association of Chain Drug Stores and the National Community Pharmacists Association in their written submissions to the Food and Drug Administration on expanding the switch paradigm.

WASHINGTON — Idaho on Monday became state No. 21 to adopt the real-time, stop-sale technology National Precursor Log Exchange in its battle against the diversion of the cough-cold ingredient pseudoephedrine to methamphetamine.

PORTLAND, Ore. — Prescription-only pseudoephedrine regulation has no impact on the methamphetamine trade, according to a Cascade Policy Institute study on the 2005 Oregon law, which restricts access to medicines containing pseudoephedrine.