Adderall is in short supply

So if classroom attention spans have been shrinking as of late, there’s a good reason. According to a survey published earlier this month by the National Community Pharmacists Association, 64% of pharmacists have had trouble getting enough Adderall this year to fill prescriptions.

💊 A deeper dive… Prescriptions for Adderall, a stimulant used to treat ADHD, are increasing fast (by 9.4% last year, per medical-data firm IQVIA). But manufacturers are unable to produce enough to meet demand.

• And that’s not because of supply chain issues or labor shortages. Rather, the DEA is to blame, since it controls manufacturing levels and hasn’t lifted its annual quota.

🤔 So why doesn’t it just approve an increase?... The answer is complicated. Telehealth medicine has exploded in recent years, allowing for increased access to a wide variety of drugs, from those treating men’s performance issues, to hair loss, to ADHD. This has led to massive investments and valuations for telehealth startups, which then manifests into a marketing explosion.

We’re seeing this rn from companies like Done and the SoftBank-backed Cerebral, both of whom have spent big money on TikTok campaigns – in fact, after the latter added ADHD treatment to its suite of products in early 2021, sales reportedly increased tenfold.

But there appears to be some, ehrm, shadiness happening on the marketing and prescribing front.

• Cerebral is currently being investigated by the DOJ for possible violations of the Controlled Substances Act.
• A recent study in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry analyzed 100 TikTok videos about ADHD. It found more than half of them were misleading, and only a fifth were considered “useful.”

📸 The big picture: ~10% of children are being diagnosed with ADHD, per CDC estimates. And over the past two years, adderall prescriptions for Adderall and its generic equivalents have increased by ~25% for those ages 22-44.