there are freakout posts every hour or so on r/adhd. desperate plans to amass a huge petition of signatures, or challenge it legally with a class act. lawsuit, but mostly a lot of despair and disbelief. also some blaming of the so-called undeserved adderall users that are allegedly the official reason for the shortage...and something about tiktok users.
it's bad and capitalism is certainly the reason why. i'd like to understand the nuance of it more though if anyone had some good leftist takes on it.
As far as i know this is extremely simple - the DEA sets quotas to the pill on how much adhd medication can be manufactured each month. The drug companies are allowed to manufacture exactly that much and no more. No stockpiling for next month, no ramping up for increased demand.
And the numbers the DEA uses to estimate demand to set the quota come from previous tears. Adhd diagnosis went up during the pandemic, dea didn't give a shit, so now people get to suffer from the war on drugs in groovy new ways.