Op-Ed: Don’t let Adderall scarcity trigger a repeat of the opioid epidemic

U.S. pharmacies are critically low on Adderall and its generic equivalents, leaving more than 26 million patients scrambling and competing for the pills since late summer. So as countless individuals are confronting having to rapidly taper or stop, we’re facing a real possibility of a public health disaster on a scale not seen since the prescription opioid crisis that began a decade ago. Instead of enduring withdrawal, other individuals cut off from Adderall are likely to turn to alternative stimulants like crystal meth, fueling a much broader crisis. The government response to the prescription opioid crisis focused on rapidly reducing supply: crackdowns on pill mills, tightened restrictions on prescribing and reformulation of products to make them harder to snort and inject. Just as with heroin, years of increasingly punitive policies, aggressive law enforcement, government fear-mongering and growing public panic failed to address the “meth problem.” If anything, interventions like the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act of 2005 disrupted meth production by a domestic cottage industry, cementing its reorganization as an international, industrial-level cartel operation – dramatized in the narrative arc of “Breaking Bad.” This made meth more ubiquitous, more potent and cheaper than ever.