Drugstores in England stopped selling big bottles of headache pills in order to cut down on suicide attempts. Stephen J. Dubner explores the consequences. The view of psychologist David Lester:
They started doing that about five years ago, and they restrict the numbers, and they put them in plastic blisters so you have to tear them out. And again, you’d think all I have to do is go to six drugstores, you know, buy packets in each of them, all I have to do is just tear them out. But it has cut down the number of overdoses. It’s also cut down the number of serious overdoses that have led to kidney damage. Now, very few people die of an acetaminophen overdose. So it’s been hard to document that it cut the number of deaths, but certainly the number of attempts.
The Dish 