Shire Shrugged Off

And indeed, when you read the Vyvanse label, it does mention that when drug addicts recruited for a study were given a 100-milligram dose to play with (higher than what would normally be prescribed to a child), the "high" they received was less than what they got when given a dose of Adderall. [This is science, so drug addicts don't get high. Instead, they report responses on scales that measure "drug liking," "euphoria," "amphetamine effects," and "benzadrine effects."]

But what happens when a drug addict takes just a bit more Vyvanse, like 150 mg of the drug? The label tells us:

"However, oral administration of 150 mg lisdexamfetamine [Vyvanse] produced increases in positive subjective responses on these scales that were statistically indistinguishable from the positive subjective responses produced by 40 mg of oral immediate-release d-amphetamine and 200 mg of diethylpropion."

Translation: You can abuse Vyvanse, you just might need to swallow two pills instead of one.

You can see where I'm going with all these comparisons. Adderall XR is a perfectly good drug for ADHD that just happens to be losing patent protection. Therefore, Shire needed to find a replacement to keep the profit flowing. With New River and Vyvanse, Shire found just what it was looking for.

Never mind that Adderall XR is probably better for patients. That's perfect-world stuff. In the real world, where drug companies play and patients pay, shiny new patents are what matter most.

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