Need for Speed: FDA Issues Notice on Adderall Shortages

Anyone prescribed the ADHD and narcolepsy drug Adderall has been advised to seek alternative medications after a nationwide shortage was confirmed by the FDA last week, but the reasons for the shortage remain a mystery.

The FDA didn’t give much of an explanation for the shortage, other than saying that one of the main manufacturers of Adderall (which is the brand name for a specific combination of amphetamine and dextroamphetamine salts), Teva, was experiencing “ongoing intermittent production delays,” and “others Manufacturers continue to produce mixed amphetamine salts, but there is insufficient supply to continue to meet US market demand from these manufacturers.”

The good news is that most of these delays are currently scheduled to be fixed by October or November, which is an updated ETA originally planned for March 2023. That means we’ll likely avoid phasing them out entirely. Nonetheless, the FDA advised patients to seek alternative treatments anyway.

A New York Times article cited the nationwide rise in ADHD as the primary cause of the shortage, and it cannot be overstated that reported cases of ADHD are indeed increasing. As a heavily regulated Schedule 2 drug, Adderall’s manufacture is often slow to respond to demand due to the bureaucracy required to manufacture it. So the rise in ADHD may actually be to blame, but in terms of the lack of Adderall itself, it’s probably a bit mixed.

The usual suspects when things get tight lately are COVID-related supply chain issues or the ongoing war in Ukraine, but Hamilton Morris, a journalist and scientific researcher known for his TV show Hamilton’s Pharmacopeia, hinted on Twitter that the Adderall deficiency could be due to a lack of nitroethane, one of the potential raw materials from which it is made. One of the main distributors of nitroethane, Sigma Aldrich, listed it as unavailable on its website. Unfortunately, a call to Sigma Aldrich’s media department was not answered quickly enough to meet my deadline.

There is really a shortage of nitroethane that existed in Ukraine before the war and COVID, there is almost no information about it online, but it is very real. The lab I work in hasn’t been able to source nitroethane for years. https://t.co/a5uIJt25lU pic.twitter.com/gaCgpor53C

— Hamilton Morris (@HamiltonMorris) October 15, 2022

Others disagreed, saying there was no reason to believe there was a shortage of nitroethane just yet, but it would certainly explain things if it turned out to be true. Chemjobber, a blog dedicated to chemistry news and chemistry jobs, told High Times that while low nitroethane supply could be a potential factor, it is essentially much more complicated than that.

“I strongly believe that manufacturing APIs (active pharmaceutical ingredients) is rarely the problem,” said Chemjobber. “That’s an issue at the end of the chain, and there are 4-5 steps before that, meaning you could have an issue with tableting, shipping, or labor, etc.”

At that point, Teva reported earlier this year that they were facing labor shortage issues, a common complaint in the times of COVID-19. Therefore, it’s not necessarily a shortage of any chemical, but seems to be the perfect calamity storm and the basic production limitations of any heavily regulated industry.

Regarding whether or not America will phase out Adderall, Chemjobber compared it to the toilet paper craze of early COVID and predicted that too will pass. It also seems a good sign that Teva has moved its ETA up several months in the space of a week. Unfortunately they didn’t call me back either.

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