Coles Plague hits the Inner East
I had a fun little adventure trying to locate cold&flu tablets last night.
At about ten o’clock, i drove down to my closest supermarket (a Coles) in search of “day and night” type tablets, preferably with some sort of anti-histamine. They had a whole stack of cold&flu related products - and every single one of them was a herbal remedy.
Now i know that herbal remedies are not to be automatically written off (after all, it’s where aspirin comes from). But i also know that there are a lot of people making a lot of money selling people things that do not necessarily do anything (beyond the placebo effect). I have a very strong suspicion - based on the kind of stuff they even sell in pharmacys now - that medication in Australia is not under any requirement stronger than “make sure it isnt poisonous”. And considering i am less-than-broke at the moment, i did not want to spend my money on something i have no confidence in.
So i drove to the next closest supermarket, and discovered that it was also a Coles. They had exactly the same range. And not a single cold and flu product containing pseudoephedrine (or anything that looked like it could be an antihistamine… or anything that wasnt prepared by being “ground up”…).
So i moved on to the next closest one.
Guess which brand of supermarket that was?
Once again, they were stocking exactly the same range.
So i went to bed, snuffly and sneezy. I didn’t get to sleep until about 4-5am, for the third night in a row. The whole thing left me with a few bitter-old-man thoughts.
“It should be illegal to own the only competition in a few suburbs radius… grumble grumble … this is exactly why those media ownership laws are evil… grumble grumble … do we even have any regulations about whether medicine has to be empirically proven to work? … grumble *cough* … stupid rich inner city suburbs only providing demand for silly herbal cures… grumble grumble ad nauseum…”
Related posts:
That’s a damn shame… I don’t blame you for not buying any of that snake oil. The only real difference between “natural” remedies and standard western medicine is whether it’s been tested and shown to be effective or not. As you said, some herbal remedies may well be effective, but we as humans have a horrible tendency to credit a cure as effective based on a single self-administered test.
A guy in the US just testified before Congress there about the (in)efficacy of homeopathic remedies. Before testifying he went across the street to a pharmacy and bought a pack of homeopathic sleeping pills, and then while testifying he swallowed every last one of them. Of course, he was fine afterwards…
i think you’ll find that products with pseudoephedrine are only available in chemists, they are used to produce speed, so obviously don’t want them too available.
Even the chemist products are starting to switch from pseudoephedrine to other chemicals to reduce this supply.
Next time you need something like this, try the chemist, not the supermarket.
Yeah, Chris is right. Pseudoephedrine products are pretty heavily regulated and are a pharmacy only product.
I work for one of the major supermarkets and trust me, if they could, they would all sell most pharmacy products.
The supermarkets are ready to put pharmacies in most stores (like overseas), they just need the government to allow it. Ever noticed how most newer Coles and Safeway stores (e.g. QV) have a “Health and Beauty” section that is distinctly different in feel from the rest of the store - it’s ready to change into a drug store whenever it’s approved.
- “i think you’ll find that products with pseudoephedrine are only available in chemists, they are used to produce speed, so obviously don’t want them too available.”
That is amazing, i could swear you used to be able to get things like Sudafed from supermarkets. Is this a recent development, or is my memory playing tricks on me?
People really are over-the-top insane re: drugs.
- “Next time you need something like this, try the chemist, not the supermarket.”
Chemists in my area generally are not open at that time of night (it was past 9).
I wouldn’t say a recent development as such, but the new laws haven’t been in effect for that long either. Sorry for the vague reply. Also, whereabouts are you? You mention the inner east… I know there is a pharmacy in Toorak (?) which is open until midnight. If you are interested I can find out exactly where it is…?
Unfortunately it is absolutely true that you cannot buy products with pseudoephedrine anywhere other than chemists - and when you get there you better have some ID, because you have to SHOW YOUR LICENSE in order to purchase them and answer a bunch of silly questions too. Then, the packet they give you will only have enough doses for 3 or 4 days at most. You cannot buy the old style big packets of these things. You cannot buy more than one box at a time, unless you want to visit a lot of chemists. They’re supposed to be keeping track - but from what I hear these records don’t go anywhere, so what is the point of all this?. It’s a huge waste of time for the chemists and a major annoyance.
I have a sinus problem, especially when I have a cold or flu and pseudoephedrine has always been the only thing that has worked for me.
What I’d like to know is, do speed users have clear sinuses? It is probably easier to get speed than pseudoephedrine these days.
Snoskred
http://www.snoskred.org/
‘Manda… i would lovvvve the rough location of an open-till midnight pharmacy in Toorak if you could find it for me!
I’m in Hawthorn, and i’m not usually home before 6, so such a pharmacy would probably be used quite frequently.
Snoskred, i feel your pain.
“so what is the point of all this?”
To get somebody, somewhere, re-elected by a lot of very old, very *frightened* people?
Hello,
Sorry again to be somewhat vague with the details… I know it’s on Orrong Road but I can’t remember what corner! It’s either the corner of Orrong and High Street, Orrong and Malvern Road, or Orrong and Toorak Road. It’s on the corner and there’s a big sign above it saying that it’s open until midnight.