As kids' accidental ODs rise, FDA still won't mandate flow restrictors in medicine bottles

[sdmikev]

Debating the merits of the mechanism ad-nausea is one thing (which is the forte of BB pedants) but taking it to the next level and calling it govt overreach is just silly.

[HMSGoose]

These are good questions, although in this case the proposed solution seems so unobtrusive that I’m not sure it’s worth it to be overly cautious. I think your queries actually address the “what if we do this, and think we’ve solved the real problem, but haven’t, and kids keep getting hurt while we’re wasting our time” concern more than the “can we really afford to let the government have more control over our lives in this way” concern.

[fireshadow]

@Mister44

How many ODs are from actual children self medicating, and how many are from parents accidentally giving too much medicine? If the number of ODs have recently increased, what is the reason for that?

From the Bond paper:

Type - Number of “Injuries” from 2001-2008

Unintentional all - 25,651
Unintentional (self-ingestion) Rx - 18,192
Unintentional (self-ingestion) OTC - 5075
Unintentional therapeutic error Rx - 1750
Unintentional therapeutic error OTC - 634

The paper also suggests a rise in the number of medications in the environment of small children as a reason for the increase in visits/admissions/injuries.

[Mister44]

Huh - what I find interesting is that in both self-ingestion and therapeutic errors are around 3x as high for Rx, as they are for OTC. One would think OTC meds would be much more common and prone to misuse. Interestingly, where another safety device is most prudent would be on the generic brown Rx bottles you get from CVS etc, not the OTC Tylenol bottles.

[fireshadow]

My initial guess was that prescription medicines are used on a more regular basis so there is more opportunity for leaving them out in places where small children can grab them. I searched a little bit, but was not able to find any numbers.

[Raita]

@Jardine

Flow restrictors would be helpful, but wouldn’t it be even more helpful to stop putting acetaminophen into every medicine? They claim it’s in cold medicine to help your fever, but its main purpose is to stop people from abusing cold medicine with the threat of killing your liver. They basically add a small dose of poison to stop people from using medicine recreationally. I’d much rather see people get high on DXM or codeine than die of liver failure because they took too much acetaminophen.

Yes, this! I much prefer ibuprofein over acetaminophen, which I avoid if possible.

Around three years ago I really liked tripping on DXM. It’s more popular than people think, especially here in Finland (I’ve used countless different drugs, but the experiences I’ve had with DXM are still some of the best). It’s possible to extract the DXM from the other nasty stuff and I’ve always done it that way, except for the first couple of times. But there will always be some users who don’t have the patience to do the extraction and will just chug it all.

To think that adding ridicilous amounts of acetaminophen on cold medicine does anything to stop people from using DXM is just idiotic. It’s nothing but an unnecessary punisment for drug users. “Want to get high? Enjoy your liver damage, you low-life junkie scum!”