Year: 2009

Looks like the FDA panel considering regulatory changes to acetominophen has decided that Percoset and Vicodin have to go.  This is going to essentially mean that people who have procedures that cause mild to severe pain, like having wisdom teeth removed, or having a minor surgery, are going to find it very difficult to find pain relief.

Percoset and Vicodin are both combination therapies, combing acetaminophen with oxycodone, in the case of Percoset, and hydrocodone, in the case of Vicodin.  Because of this, they are Schedule III drug under the Controlled Substances Act.  Regulators feel the acetaminophen content makes the drug less likely to be abused, so it is so classified.  That doesn’t stop people from trying, however, and a number of people each year fry their livers either by taking too much, or because they did some failed home chemistry trying to separate the narcotic drug from its codrug.

Oxycodone and hydrocodone, on their own, are both Schedule II drugs, meaning they have a theraputic use, but are likely to cause addiction and be abused.  Doctors are very reluctant to prescribe Schedule II drug, because they attract more heat from regulators.  There are also additional restrictions on Schedule II drugs, such as a doctor’s office not being able to call in a new prescription (it takes a physical, written prescription to make changes to dose, or get a refill).  If this is the only option available, many doctors, oral surgeons, periodontists, and various other medical professionals who often have a need to treat pain, are less likely to prescribe narcotic pain killers.   While this would probably be just fine by regulators, if you’re in pain and can’t find relief, a narcotic is often the only thing that will do the job.

Fortunately, there are a few alternatives, although they are expensive.  One is Vicoprofen, which is a combination of ibuprofen and vicodin.  For many people, it’s a viable alternative to narcotics in combination with acetaminaphen, but for many people, it is not.  Particularly people with gastrointestinal disorders, people taking blood thinners, or people with inflammatory bowel disease.  Another is good old fashioned Tylenol with Codeine, but unfortunately, for 10% or so of the population, their livers lack the enzyme necessary to convert codeine to morphine, which makes the drug’s narcotic component useless to them.

Don’t think, either, that just because many OTC pain releivers and many narcotics are both GRAS, or Generally Reocnigzed as Safe, that you can just combine them at will, and sell them on the market.  Combination therapies have to go through the FDA approval process as if they were new drugs, which means major costs to do the clinical trials.  No pharmaceutical company is going to do that without patent protection.  In short, if Vicoprofen doesn’t work for you, you’re screwed.  You can suffer in pain.  Hope and Change has come, folks!

It’s pretty clear by now that the federal government is completely out of control.  I’m in agreement with Yoseminite Sam about the new Con & Trade scheme recently passed by the House:

To say that I am angry is an understatement. One of the more outrageous parts of this outrageous bill is a requirement for a home energy audit upon selling a home. If your home fails this audit then the seller would have to pay to fix the problems outlined in the audit. So if you have an older home(like me) that has older appliances(like me), you will have to pay thousands of dollars to get new appliances, air conditioners or water heaters even if those appliances are in perfect working order. So much for the reduce, reuse, recycle encomium that the environmentalists keep prating on about. The landfills will be full of these still functioning appliances.

I’m probably a little less angry at the Amerian people though, because polls show that Obama’s policies are unpopular.  I don’t think it’ll be very long until that causes his approval ratings to take a hit.  I think that most people really had no idea what they were getting with Obama, as much as many of us tried to warn them.

But it’s not just Obama.  It’s pretty clear the federal bureaucracy is completely out of control as well.  Just yesterday, for instance, comes this story about the need to further regulate Tylenol.  And this is just the latest in a long line of insults.  It’s like, with the cat out of the White House, the mice now feel like they have free reign over the place.

What’s even more depressing is I don’t see the Republicans in a position to be able to capitalize on the unpopularity of Obama’s policies.  I don’t think we’re going to see a resurgent 1994 “Contract with America.”   Besides, we’ve been through the Republican Revolution once already, and I don’t know if liberty could afford another.

The only way I think we’re going to fix things is to build a movement to amend the Constitution.  If Republicans are smart, I would capitolize on this by calling for a Constitutional amendment.  First things first, we need a balanced budget amendment.  Second I think Republicans really ought to consider pushing Randy Barnett’s Federalism Amendment.  I think it needs some work to make it feasible, but if we can get a handful of states to pass laws opting out of the federal gun control regime, we ought to be able to get them to pass an amendment that limits the power of the national government.

The best part is, we don’t even need the Federal Government to do it.  We’ve been frightened of the idea of a Constitutional Convention, because it would likely be hijacked by the left, but why do we fear that?  Red states, even in the era of Obama, still greatly outnumber blue states.  I don’t think there’s much danger the country is going to adopt a new socialist constitution.

Given the nature of political life in this country, I don’t think there’s going to be any way to get the federal government under control unless we tie it down through constitutional amendment.  The progressives managed to greatly expeand the power of government through this method in the early part of the 20th century.  Why couldn’t we?