I'd never considered blister packs as an impulse control measure before; I had assumed it was for ease of dosing/packaging, and perhaps longer shelf-life (The US approach of (until relatively recent automation improvements) manually counting pills into a bottle always struck me as inefficient).
A short transcript[1] from the podcast agrees though, and there's a currently previous[2] and ongoing[3] research into packaging/impulsivity.
There's some other research as well that shows that restricting pack size of OTC paracetamol/acetaminophen reduces suicides, too[4]
A short transcript[1] from the podcast agrees though, and there's a currently previous[2] and ongoing[3] research into packaging/impulsivity.
There's some other research as well that shows that restricting pack size of OTC paracetamol/acetaminophen reduces suicides, too[4]
[1] http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/05/17/why-cant-you-buy-a-bi...
[2] http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=ht...
[3] http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01118208
[4] http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fj...