On ShowMeBlog on July 1st I posted about a panel voting to do away with Vicodin and Percocet. That was is here. We got a couple of comments from people that say they need those medications for pain relief.
I been following the discussions of the issue on the news.
The way I understand it now is that people could still get the pain medication that they need now…but it would not contain acetaminophen. Vicodin and Percocet is a mix of two medications and one is the pain medication and the other is acetaminophen.
Now acetaminophen is very hard on the liver.
What the panel wants is to take out the acetaminophen and then the doctor and patient can decide just how much, if any, of the acetaminophen they should take.
So if they still call say Vicodin by that name you would take it and you could then take with it Tylenol, NyQuil, Pamprin or Allerest with it.
That sounds like a very good idea to me.
However I am not sure if it is the same panel or a different group they want to reduce the strength in the acetaminophen that you can buy over the counter without a Rx from a doctor.
Like right now you can buy Tylenol Acetaminophen Extra Strength (500 mg) over the counter. Due to the damage that acetaminophen does to the liver I suspect they want to reduce the strength.
