FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s lawyers made an unusual request as his fraud trial entered its third week: more Adderall for their client.

In a weekend letter to the judge, the defense team asked for SBF, who has ADHD, to get 20mg of long-release Adderall before court sessions to help him focus. They say the stakes are high because…

• Access to the ADHD meds would be a critical factor in his decision on whether to testify in the trial in which he’s facing up to 110 years in prison.
• SBF’s current dosage is below the amount he’s prescribed, leaving him unable to concentrate and “meaningfully” participate in the trial.

The jailed cryptopreneur is just one of many Americans affected by the ongoing nationwide ADHD medication shortage. The Food and Drug Administration declared a shortage on Oct. 12, 2022, and drugmakers are still struggling to produce enough Adderall over a year later. It’s caused some providers to prescribe alternatives like Vyvanse and Concerta, some of which are now also in short supply. 

Why isn’t there enough Adderall to go around?

The proliferation of e-health startups has made getting a prescription easier than before, contributing to an uptick in patients. At the same time, the abundance of cheaper generic versions of Adderall left manufacturers with less profit motive to stock up in preparation for a potential shortage.

Pharma companies initially blamed the shortage on supply chain snags, but more recently, they have said restrictive regulations are limiting their ADHD drug production.

The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) imposes quotas on how much of the active ingredients in ADHD meds companies can acquire, since most of them are classified as addictive substances. Though the DEA has claimed drugmakers didn’t exhaust their quotas last year, some companies recently told NBC they had hit their limit and requested larger allocations.

Regulators are moving to fill pill bottles: The FDA recently approved multiple generic versions of Vyvanse, while the DEA lifted the production quota for some ADHD meds late last month.—SK

There are a lot of questions surrounding the journey of an entrepreneur. How do they get started? How do they calculate risk vs. reward? When and how can they turn to early-stage investing?

Want the answers? Morning Brew’s very own co-founder and executive chairman, Alex Lieberman, is sitting down with 3 founders to explore the entrepreneurial journey from vision to venture with DealMaker.

It’s all happening at our virtual event, Meet the Founders: How Entrepreneurs Are Leveraging the Crowd. Hear from the founders of Boxabl, LiquidPiston, and EnergyX on the value of early-stage investing and how their products are poised to revolutionize their respective industries. Attendees will even have the chance to learn more about investing in these ventures.

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The Gaza–Egypt border remained closed. Despite optimism from US officials that Gaza’s southern border with Egypt would open to allow foreign nationals out of the bombarded territory and aid in, the Rafah Crossing stayed shut yesterday, sowing confusion as the humanitarian crisis inside Gaza worsened. Following the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attacks, Israel launched a series of retaliatory strikes in Gaza and shut off the area’s electricity and water. Talks to open the Rafah Crossing were held up by Egypt’s concerns that Israel would not pause its airstrikes in the area, WSJ reported. Between 500 and 600 Americans are trapped in Gaza, the State Department estimated. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the US and Israel have agreed to allow aid to reach Gaza but believe Hamas could try to disrupt it. President Biden will visit Israel tomorrow in solidarity, after warning the US ally against occupying Gaza.

Big donors pull back from Ivy League over response to Israel–Hamas war. Major donors at UPenn and Harvard have made it clear that they’re displeased enough to leave their checkbooks closed. Jon Huntsman, whose family name is on Wharton’s main building, joined Wharton advisory board chair and billionaire Apollo CEO Marc Rowan in withholding support from the school over what they view as UPenn’s failure to condemn antisemitism. Billionaire donors Bill Ackman and Kenneth Griffin are among those who have criticized Harvard for not taking a stronger stance against Hamas after a letter signed by student groups blamed Israel for all violence, and a nonprofit founded by Leslie Wexner, who made billions running Victoria’s Secret, is cutting ties with the university entirely.

LinkedIn laid off nearly 700 employees. The cuts were centered on the social network’s core engineering team, CNBC reported, though product, talent, and finance teams were also affected. It’s LinkedIn’s second round of significant layoffs this year after it eliminated a similar number of roles in May to streamline operations and lean into artificial intelligence. The latest cuts, representing 3% of LinkedIn’s 20,000-member workforce, come as the Microsoft-owned company’s year-over-year revenue growth has slowed for eight straight quarters amid a declining advertising market—even as its user base has ballooned to more than 950 million.

College students have crunched the numbers, and a career in accounting is no longer adding up for them.

According to the most recent data from the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, the number of US students graduating with either a bachelor’s or master’s degree in accounting dropped 7.4% during the 2021–22 academic year from the year before, the largest one-year decline since at least 1994–95.

Why have these degrees become so much less popular?

• Pay has stagnated. According to the WSJ, the average starting salary for recent graduates is $56,000, a number that has not budged since 2008 when adjusting for inflation. It’s also well below starting salaries in tech or finance.
• More education. Accountants require a fifth year at a college, an expense that is proving prohibitive for many considering a profession that was once seen as a path to the upper middle-class for poorer Americans.

With more than 300,000 accountants and auditors leaving the field over the past two years and the pipeline drying up, large and small American firms are writing off the idea of finding help at home. PwC has outsourced to Malaysia, Argentina, China, India, Mexico, and the Philippines, while Deloitte’s US business employs almost as many people outside the US as it does overseas.—DL

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When the US hosts the Summer Olympics in July 2028, you’ll have a fresh slate of sports to watch while slack-jawed on your couch.

Yesterday, the International Olympic Committee officially greenlit cricket, flag football, baseball/softball, lacrosse, and squash for the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles. It’s a first for flag football and squash, and a return for cricket and lacrosse, which had short-lived Olympic debuts more than 100 years ago.

There’s no guarantee that these sports will stick after 2028 (though some recent newcomers like surfing have since become permanent). Still, some additions could make a splash:

• The addition of cricket is projected to increase the value of India’s Olympics broadcasting rights by as much as $200 million.
• The NFL is backing the inclusion of flag football, which could hand Olympic organizers a big sponsorship boost while also promoting American football’s global growth.

Major League Baseball has not allowed its players to compete in past Olympics, but the LA 2028 committee is reportedly in talks with the league to let pro players hit the international diamond. Olympics executives also need to decide if they will allow the North American indigenous lacrosse team, the Haudenosaunee Nationals, to compete in the sport they created.—ML

Stat: Reading this on the train to work? You’re not alone: work-from-home rates are the lowest they’ve been since the start of the pandemic. Last week, someone was WFH for even one day in fewer than 26% of US households, down from 37% of households in early 2021, surveys by the Census Bureau show. As employers push to get workers out of their yoga pants and back at their desks, only seven states now have a remote work rate above 33%, compared to 31 states while the pandemic was raging, according to Bloomberg.

Quote: “We need to come together to bring an end to this acrimonious round of talks.”

Ford’s Executive Chairman Bill Ford (yes, he’s a nepo baby; his great-grandfather was Henry Ford) took the rare step of speaking out publicly against the United Auto Workers strike even as contract talks continue. Rejecting the ratched-up rhetoric of the UAW, Ford said the union should be working with the company to take on foreign competitors and stressed that the fate of the American auto industry itself is at stake. Ford said if the strike continues “it will have a major impact on the American economy and devastate local communities.”

Read: Why all your sweaters are garbage. (The Atlantic)

Bake: This baguette recipe requires only five minutes of work.

Learn: Here’s the history of why superheroes wear spandex.

Buy (or just gawk): These Halloween costumes for dogs are so cute that it’s spooky.

Embrace string theory: Rolling Stone offers a list of the 250 best guitarists of all time.

Make your app dreams a reality: Don’t miss our free “How to Build Your Own App (no coding skills required)” class tomorrow with founder and co-host of Bossy, Tara Reed. You’ll learn how to build an app without any help from tech people. Register today.

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