Bacon, Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, Explosives

Dr. Alexander Lerman, a psychiatrist from Chappaqua, N.Y., said his patients could not simply switch from one medicine or dosage to another without consequences. And some of his patients, he said, cannot afford the branded version of the drugs.

“For the first time in my career,” Dr. Lerman said, “there is this enormous and mysterious scarcity of the basic product that is proven to work.”

Earlier in the article:

Every year, the D.E.A. accepts applications from manufacturers to make the drugs, analyzes how much was sold the previous year and then allots portions of the expected demand to various companies.

Mystery solved. The reason for all this? Amphetamines, in the form of Adderall, are abused; therefore, we must have quotas for production to reduce abuse. Somehow. It will work this time.