Asthmatic Rant - The Idiotic Regulation of Inhalers

This actually all started a few years ago, when the environmental lobby successfully convinced Washington that all forms of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are horribly, terribly bad for the atmosphere and the environment. CFCs, a common propellant that was used in aerosol based spray products, are supposedly a danger to the Earth's ozone layer. Mind you, if all the people of the world stood outside and sprayed every can of every sort up into the air, it would never rise high enough into the atmosphere to ever even dent the ozone layer. I will allow that potentially, of course, if vast amounts of CFCs were injected high enough, perhaps some minor degradation could occur (based on the chemistry and science only tested in a laboratory environment). At any rate, the FDA decided that not only are aerosol cans a dire threat to our world, but small, compact CFC based asthma inhalers are too.

I am an asthmatic. Have been since I was 10 years old. I have had prescription-only, fast-acting inhalers by my side ever since. Fortunately with age, my asthma has eased to primarily a seasonal nuisance, but I still never go anywhere without an inhaler. For the past few years, I've had to use an "environmentally safe" inhaler that costs more and doesn't work nearly as well (it takes more puffs to get sufficient medicine into my lungs). Tell me, can anyone seriously or honestly believe that any puff I take out of a CFC based inhaler is 1) going to end up in the atmosphere instead of my lungs, or 2) that there's enough of it that might escape high enough to do any sort of measurable damage to the environment? Horse-puckey. I don't buy it. At all.

It's too late now, of course. I suppose we ought to be glad they didn't ban inhalers entirely. The environmentalists have won this battle, and the pharmaceuticals are either just passing down the cost of increased regulation to the patient or increasing their profit. I don't know which, and I don't care.

To the environmentalists: Stay out of my medicine cabinet and let me breathe.