FDA Recommends Tightening Controls of Certain Narcotics
For decades, opiate addicted pill-poppers have needed to worry about the potentially damaging side effects of their habit. Acetaminophen, one of the primary ingredients in such prescription analgesics as Vicodin and Percocet and over-the-counter medications like Tylenol, has long been known to be extremely toxic to the liver, if taken in exorbitant doses or for prolonged periods of time. This drug, while effective at alleviating pain, does not have any hallucinogenic or other fun properties when taken to excess, as can the aforementioned opioid narcotics, and may casual users of these pills don’t seem to realize how much liver-killing acetaminophen is actually in many of the recreational drugs they happily swallow or snort by the handful. New regulations would limit the amount of acetaminophen in prescription and non-prescription pain-killers, protecting future drug addicts from the severely harshed buzz of terminal hepatic failure.
Chemicals in, Chemicals out
This problem “causes more deaths than all RX drugs combined”.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106161845
pslarkin
July 2, 2009 at 5:58 am
From what I can see, this problem of liver complications stems more from the individual’s ignoring labeling and the advice of doctors and overdosing themselves. I would doubt if many people who strictly follow their doctor’s/label’s instructions would ever come to liver failure under the current system. This would of course mean that changing the size of the tablets and what it says on the label is unlikely to do much good.
Mein Schatz
July 2, 2009 at 6:04 am