[datasink]

I briefly worked as a retail pharmacy technician 12 years ago. There were a few pharmacists that I worked with during this time and all of them were aware that phenylephrine essentially did nothing.

I hadn't really thought about it until now, but these pharmacists did not directly work with each other, so it must have been obvious that phenylephrine was ineffective.

[fnordpiglet]

Every human with a nose knew it didn’t work, because when you took it, it didn’t work. The fact it was marketed was purely a regulatory exploit by pharmaceutical companies. The truth is, they could have continued to let pseudoephedrine be behind the counter and it would have been fine. But someone realized phenylephrine was approved OTC and sounded sort of like pseudoephedrine, so they could claim the shelf space and edge pseudoephedrine products.

Their defense to the FDA in being allowed to continue to market despite being proven even before they began their cynical ploy was consumers want convenience, which sadly is clearly true, that despite knowing if you walked five feet further and got the pseudoephedrine they would get relief they grabbed the drug conveniently placed. Fortunately lobbying money only went so far this time.

[rincebrain]

A lot of pharmacies have limited hours and long lines for people to say "give me the thing" compared to just grabbing it off the shelf at any time of day with no line.

Some people I know are essentially nocturnal, and have to significantly disrupt their lives whenever they have to do an irregular medication pickup rather than having it shipped ahead of time.

So it can be beyond just "slightly more work" for many people to get it.

Personally, I try to remember to get some whenever I refill meds at the pharmacy, not because I go through it that often, but because if I'm feeling poorly enough that I'm taking it, I probably am not in a state where I want to wait an hour in line just to ask for it.

[gehwartzen]

This is sadly so true for many many categories of consumer products; by the time sufficiently enough people discover the product is bullshit to turn general public opinion the original sales already made the "innovator" enough money to make the whole endeavor worthwhile.

[naijaboiler]

All professionals knew it did nothing. But the problem is by law FDA only needs to certify that OTC medications are safe not that they are effective. So drug companies go to town making billions off those old safe but useless medications

The real change is to add the mandate of efficacy to FDA for OTC medications.

[abfan1127]

you don't want to go down the road of the "FDA mandating efficacy". However, requiring "truth in medicating" i.e. demonstrable efficacy rates would be nice.

[kridsdale1]

Indeed. My Walgreens has a whole section of clearly and not-clearly labeled homeopathics for these symptoms.

People want to buy them and they won’t get hurt, let em, I guess.

[jwineinger]

My dad is a physician and as far back as I can remember, he said it was worthless.