I have since visited two different CVS stores here in Center City Philly and finding any product with pseudoephedrine is near impossible.  Even the Sudafed brand medications mostly containl phenylephedrine.  As an allergy sufferer, phenylephedrine is simply not as effective as pseudoephedrine.  

A website called Capitol Hill Blue has an article about the new restrictions on pseudoephredrine, and how they are contained in the new version of the Patriot Act.    Apparently the worst is yet to come.  According to the article, all pseudoephrine will be taken off the shelves and brought behind the counter, where consumers will have to show ID to purchase it.  Plus, customers will be limited to 300 pills a month. 

I will state again that I think this is mostly an overreaction.  First of all, I never used close to 300 pills of Sudafed in a month, and I would suspect most allergy sufferers would say the same.   This seems a misguided attempt — as are most efforts in the drug wars here in the US — that will affect mostly consumers who really do use the product the way it's intended — to drain their sinuses.

The people the new restrictions are meant to target will simply get their supplies elsewhere.  The article on Capitol Hill Blue suggests Mexico will be their favorite supplier.  So who loses?  Not the drug manufacturers.  They never do in prohibition efforts.  The losers will be allergy sufferers for whom pseudoephedrine was a savior.  It truly does work on congestion.

The weblink is really interesting for the reader comments (which for some reason it won't let me cut and paste).  Most of the writers agree with me that this has little to do with meth, which has been on the street since the 1950s, and more to do with government control over people's lives.

The link: http://www.capitolhillblue.com/blog/2006/03/revised_patriot_act_targets_al.html