Please keep nationalistic flamebait out of your comments here. It leads to nationalistic flamewar (in the general case—not in this thread, but that was by luck).
The first thing that sprung to mind when reading the article was how terrible it was to be treated like a drug abusing criminal whenever we tried to purchase anything containing pseudoephedrine in the United States.
Pharmacist can't figure out how to scan an out of country license, makes you get your passport. Can't figure out how to scan your passport, makes you get additional ID. Can't figure out what to do with additional ID, shrugs and says sorry you can't have this medicine. I'm sorry, what??? Is this a joke? I was turned away at the pharmacy buying cold medication?
Don't even get me started about prescriptions that family members literally depend on for their livelihoods and the continuous monthly battle to keep those prescriptions filled. And I'm not just referring to stimulants.
Insofar as I can tell the prevalence of phenylephrine is due solely to this dumb policy under the umbrella of The dumb War on Drugs.
If this is somehow nationalistic flamebait, or somehow leads to nationalist flamewar, I fail to see how that is my fault. I pay plenty of US taxes, I buy my medicines elsewhere.
It's not puzzling if you look at it just from the most superficial level, which is how internet dynamics work. Any comment of the form "$country is so $bad. Elsewhere, like $other-country, $good" is going to evoke angry replies in the general case.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html