Ladies- colored contact lenses w/o prescription

[Sister Fracas 5]

and my BP medication as well

I think you should take some...you seem awfully worked up over a contact lens discussion.

needs his wife to be HAWT with the lenses...

[Caladan 19]

They're her eyes. Take all the risks you want. toodles.

She's been wearing these things for 15+ years...Now we should worry about having a doctor tell her to wash her hands before inserting them?

Only in America do you need a prescription for cosmetic contacts......It's like being held hostage every year for that piece of paper.....and the idiocy to getting a prescription is that there's no limit to the amount you can buy. You can buy a ten years supply if you have the cash.

More nonsensical government "nanny" intervention........

There might be one good reason to see a doctor; contact lenses do come in different sizes and shapes, even in the non-prescription style, and a bad fit can damage one's eyes over time. E.g., your wife wears, at least from what you've ordered, a 14.0/8.3 lens. That wouldn't fit my eye well. Just my $0.02.

And jeez, kaydee, you really think your wife's natural eye color is like your nose hair?

[Empress of Groovy 373]

Not everyone is being judgmental! I think the posts about safety are certainly valid. Because OTC sales are now illegal in the U.S., the concern is that there's no way to ensure that you're not getting knockoffs or an inferior product packaged in an Acuvue box. I suppose the assumption is that a company selling prescription products to consumers without a valid script (like all the companies trying to sell you Viagra, painkillers, etc. ) is dodgy by nature and may be selling defective #######. There's no way to know, and because many operate and distribute from overseas, you can't hunt them down and give them da business if you're harmed by their product.

The 2005 law requiring a prescription for even noncorrective lenses was a result of a number of eye injuries, some causing blindness, that resulted from OTC cosmetic lenses. I haven't read the studies, so I don't know if a lot of the users were just inexperienced w/ lenses, or maybe the lenses themselves were defective.

It does seem that people should be able to get their hands on safe, name-brand cosmetic lenses at a U.S. pharmacy w/o a prescription. The whole prescription/OTC thing in the U.S. is weird. There's a ton of stuff that's OTC now that used to require a script--not too much stuff goes the other way around.

Come on, spendthrift! Spring for an eye exam! Your wife may find that hawt!

This is nonsense. I'll bet you'd be an advocate of making condoms an Rx device once again, eh?

Reread bolded text, please, Mr. Grumpy.

I'm not saying they should be prescription, just noting that the fact that they are changes the safety situation in terms of where the products come from. The fact is, buying prescription anything without a prescription carries with it some risk. I'm not talking about consumer misuse (although I'm sure there's plenty of that going on, especially with painkillers), but the authenticity of the product itself. I don't know what the risk might be w/ cosmetic contact lenses ordered from overseas, but it stands to reason that there's some; you don't know who you're ordering from or what entity, if any, is regulating it. Acknowledging this is different from agreeing w/ the policy that has created the situation in the first place.

Oh please Agnes....I don't really have the time here to go through this. The bottom line is all that you've written here is from your perspective, one that's clearly biased to believe that what you purchase here in the U.S. is somehow of superior quality because its (supposedly) been vetted by some government agency.

You ignore the fact that simply because you obtain an Rx to use a product that you're not assured the genuine product and its earned quality assurance is guaranteed.

They are mutually exclusive. The Rx and the product prescribed are not related in terms of risk of using the product.

There are many other countries in this world that have controls just as severe as our own in terms of quality assurance.

It's your assumption that if it's not bought here that it's possibly counterfeit, or of lower quality, or it may be genuine. Your argument appears to be that if one does not have an Rx for a product, how can one know one way or the other?

This is snobbery typical of most Americans and it's based on the false notion that only in America can one be assured of quality products.

I can assure you that in places like the UAE, where many Brit expats reside may I add, as well as I myself resided for a few years, that they are even more so intolerant of counterfeit and inferior products.

When I bought medical supplies, those of a brand that were from major manufactures, including my own contact lenses and my BP medication as well, I never once questioned the quality or authenticity of the product.

Getting back to my previous point, pursuing an Rx for contact lenses assures you nothing in terms of product quality. There's no guarantee that you're getting the drug, or medical device your doctor prescribed. That's a whole other argument.

My wife has been measured for, and fitted for the lenses she's worn for years. I see no reason to repeat the exam to come to the same conclusion, wash your hands before putting them in......There's no correction nor does she need any according to her yearly employee eye examination, which is a requirement given she works in a factory that uses Lasers, an OHSA dictate.

This is all moot given that I have the lenses on order.

KD, if you don't see the difference between the guarantee of an authentic product, and a possible knockoff likely bought from overseas, I don't know what to tell you. If you can get the lenses OTC legally in Spain or the UAE or other places, that's great. American snootiness has nothing to do w/ my position. When I'm overseas, I often stock up on stuff that's still prescription here but OTC (from pharmacies) there. I wouldn't have the same confidence buying stuff online from a Web site that looks like it was constructed by a 12-year-old.

The fact is, buying the lenses through the legal channels that guarantee an authentic product (and thus compensate you should something go wrong) carries a lower risk of problems. That's all I'm saying. You're trying to read into my posts and assuming I believe that everything U.S. regulatory agencies approve is 100% safe. I'm not that much of a ding-dong. I know that products of all sorts are recalled all the time because of various safety issues, products that were approved for sale previously. But I have some familiarity with the business of counterfeit merchandise (relative in law enforcement who works in this area), and the amount of impressive-looking but fake ####### out there is staggering. And it's not uncommon for rackets to get their hands on recalled products and resell them, usually on the Web.

In other news, I've heard good things about this nose hair trimmer (FDA approved!), the Groom Mate Platinum XL: