from Hacker News

The Empty Adderall Factory

by ughitsaaron on 2/19/24, 6:14 PM with 66 comments

• by mintplant on 2/19/24, 7:08 PM

  > No one doubts ADHD stimulants’ potential for abuse and addiction. Adderall’s active ingredient is amphetamine, a drug that functions in some ways like cocaine. Both deliver excess dopamine to the brain, enhancing motivation and concentration, and the cocainelike effect of stimulants is enhanced when they’re snorted. Hence the long-standing nickname for Concerta and Ritalin: Diet Coke. “There is a fear that the overuse of prescribed amphetamines could lead to the equivalent of another opioid epidemic,” said Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, who served as the FDA’s principal deputy commissioner under Barack Obama.

  Concerta and Ritalin contain methylphenidate, not amphetamine. This is correctly stated elsewhere in the article, so I don't know why they're conflated here.

  > In one of these rooms, Ascent’s founder and CEO — Sudhakar Vidiyala, Meghana’s father — points to a hulking unit that he says is worth $1.5 million. It’s used to produce time-release Concerta tablets with three colored layers, each dispensing the drug’s active ingredient at a different point in the tablet’s journey through the body.

  Sort of; see "System Components and Performance" in [0]. There's an overcoat which contains an initial dose of methylphenidate that dissolves quickly. Under that, a three-layer core: two drug layers and one pump layer for an osmotic-controlled delivery system [1]. As the pill is processed through the body and into the gut, water is absorbed into the pump layer through a semipermeable membrane which causes the pump layer to gradually expand, pushing methylphenidate from the two drug layers out through a laser-drilled hole over time. It's a cool little mechanism.

  [0] https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/label/2007/02...

  [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osmotic-controlled_release_ora...

• by janice1999 on 2/19/24, 6:43 PM

  The author was clearly sweet-talked by the company lawyers and PR people. It's so pandering in places it's embarrassing. If a company manufacturing amphetamine is discovered to have been keeping two sets of books I'd want them investigated pretty vigorously, especially considering the ongoing human hellscape of the opioid epidemic.

• by fallingknife on 2/19/24, 7:29 PM

  Here is how stupid some of these DEA regulations are:

  > But the company has acknowledged that it committed infractions. For example, orders struck from 222s must be crossed out with a line and the word cancel written next to them. Investigators found two instances in which Ascent employees had drawn the line but failed to write the word.

• by neilv on 2/19/24, 7:31 PM

  If we get to the point of having to ration it, priority is to the people who genuinely need it for normal range of functioning.

  (Wean off those without genuine disability, who are using the drug as a performance enhancer.)

• by shrimp_emoji on 2/19/24, 7:17 PM

  What if we had cognitive performance enhancers that were deleterious to your health? Let's say they made you twice as smart but cut your lifespan in half. You might not choose to take them. But others would. And now you find yourself functionally retarded compared to those people. Think about how many advantages they get in hiring and personal success for their Faustian bargain. You might just cave and start doing them yourself. And then say even more powerful ones come along -- these make you four times as smart but are even worse for your body. Everyone just game theoretically spirals into the most extreme Faustian bargains.

  That's a dystopian concept I've never seen explored anywhere.

  Except sports, where the government steps in and makes sure that doesn't happen. ;)

• by diogenescynic on 2/19/24, 6:52 PM

  Somehow the world existed before all these amphetamines. I'm kind of okay with this. It's probably all not necessary and this will show it.