Child Cold Meds Ban Could Create Other Problems If Alternatives Are Not Put In Place

You may have heard about this already and I see some problems with this as well. For years and years there was over the counter cough and flu medications on the market for children and infants. For decades. Suddenly in the last year they want to change all that because children are dying for a few different reasons. (All quotes from MSN Health)

“The number-one cause [of problems] is accidental ingestion, so the number-one advice is keep the medication out of the reach of children,” Woodcock said. “Number two is follow directions carefully and don’t give multiple medications, which may have the same ingredient.”

You have to ask yourself a few questions. Why did the parent give the child too much? Could the parent not read well or at all. Or maybe the parent could not read English? There is also the horrific suggestion that the parent gave the child a little too much, maybe just a little more than recommended so the child would sleep and stop crying? Or you can wonder if maybe the cold remedy they were using tasted a little too good and the child got into it and took it all by accident. I think they should make them all taste like the Nyquil Black Liquorice death (no pun intended) flavor. Nobody likes that stuff. So now they are taking measures…

Saying they were acting “out of an abundance of caution,” the makers of over-the-counter cough and cold medicines said Tuesday that the medicines should not be given to children younger than 4 years old.

In addition, the companies announced that they would be using child-resistant packaging and new measuring devices for the products, Dr. Janet Woodcock, director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, told reporters at a Tuesday afternoon teleconference.

Now here is where a big problem can evolve into a bigger one. Disease Proof’s Gerry Pugliese mentions that Dr. Fuhrman is not a fan of cold “medicines” because they can cover an underlying issue that might progress into a bigger problem.

Ok, so they are planning on taking anything that says that it’s for children under 4 off of the market. This is a good idea, but let me tell you what some parents are going to do to avoid taking their children to the doctor ever time their kid has the sniffles or a fever:

Given the current state of the economy and the high cost of healthcare and for some the case of not having health insurance at all, some people WILL NOT take their children to a doctors office every time they get the sniffles as I stated a second ago. So what will they do? They will play the doctor and look at the dosage on the side of the box and think “If it says 2 tsp for a 6 year old, then my child is only 3 so I will give them half of that.” Same goes for weight. Some parents will find a way to treat their child one way or another before having to take them to the doctor unless it’s more than obvious that it could be a bigger problem.

A young child or infant that becomes sick may need to be treated by a pediatrician so there has to be some kind of low cost alternative for families to have in case they are worried that it’s more than a common cold.

So they can ban remedy medicine’s for children under 4 but they have to understand that it may lead to bigger problems. This stuff has been on the shelf for like 30 years and they just now want to do something about it?

You can read more about this here.