By adult let's assume 30 or even 40 years old, to make the topic defined. In other words, is there any age a person should be free to buy any pharmaceutical drug?

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7 opinions, 14 replies
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80
5 votes
Apr 19, 2015

Good god no! Chemotheraputics alone are incredibly dangerous and should be be administered by someone who knows what they're doing. Going beyond a personal safety issue is public safety.

The whole theory behind chemotherapy (and radiation therapy) is that we administer poison in a controlled way and hope the cancer cells die first. Someone who has no idea what they're doing could easily kill their self -- I don't even what to consider what a person with malicious intent could do with it.

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100
3 votes
Apr 19, 2015

No. The reason we have doctors and pharmacists is to make sure that medications are used safely as determined by the people with sufficient knowledge to make that determination. There are many pain killers that are extremely addictive, and if anything, need MORE restrictions on them. And adults might give or sell some of the drugs (like morphine) to children and teenagers. Certain medications that control mental health problems need to be administered carefully, as taking too much or going cold turkey (as opposed to gradually tapering off of the drug) can cause drastic side effects.

You can also poison people with certain heart medications and other drugs. Yes, you can still do that now if you have a prescription, but because it is given by prescription, the drug can be traced back to you, and to use it as a poison on someone else you would have to deprive yourself of the needed medicine in order to kill that person. There are so many ways to abuse prescription drugs either through ignorance or malevolence that it is a very GOOD thing that we regulate their use.

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100
User voted No.
2 votes
Jun 26, 2015

As knowing people in the medical field, I would have to definitely say no to this question, it would simply be unsafe to allow medication to be available to any adult without prescription. I guarantee you can walk into any E.R. and you will find people there who are trying to obtain narcotics without actually needing them, and to just start handing them over would be a bad decision.

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100
User voted No.
2 votes
Jul 18, 2015

There are certain drugs on the marketplace that have serious side effects - pharmaceutical drugs (most people know about the black market drugs, and if they don't, please refer to my brief dissertation about education about rather than banning drugs).

The pharmaceuticals I'm talking about need to be discussed with the patient by the doctor so that the patient understands and can weight the risks.

If a patient doesn't know or understand that there could be risks, or that the patient isn't physiologically capable of taking said drug (without blood/urine... tests) then no, the drug (concerned) should not be allowed over the counter.

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100
opinion
2 votes
Oct 16, 2015

First of all - No.

I wish it would be though. I deal with a severe case of migraines on a daily basis, and don't even have a doctor or my medical records at the country I live in right now. It would be nice if I could just go to the pharmacy and get what I need.

However, it only goes for me and a handful of others. It would be extremely easy to overpower and overuse the system in a very negative way.

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100
User voted Yes.
1 vote
Apr 19, 2015

If you believe that an adult has the right to do to their body whatever they wish, then you should allow them to buy and use whatever they wish. That's what this question is really asking, do you have the right to put into your body anything you wish?

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50
User voted No.
main reply
2 votes,
Apr 20, 2015

Bacteria and virus are able to adapt to medication if not used wisely.

It is not about the right to put whatever we want in our body, it is about the efficiency of treatments and by extension, the survival of mankind.

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0
User voted Yes.
0 votes,
Apr 27, 2015

Well, there isn't much you can do to a virus, bacteria have always been adapting and always will and while misuse of medication can cause bacteria to become resistant, the only thing you're doing by restricting the use of medication is slowly down how fast it happen. In fact with all the anti-bacterial things we are currently using that aren't needed is causing bacteria to become resistant at a faster rate, so are you willing to ban anti-bacterial items (gels, food trays, sprays) for the same reason? And mankind isn't in any real danger as we've survived bacteria and viruses for many many years. Yes it might make a difference in this or that person but mankind as a whole will survive.

Again the real question is can you put in your body whatever you want?

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100
1 vote,
May 3, 2017

Will everyone be willing to take responsibility for putting whatever they want in their bodies? If someone takes something harmful or takes so much of a medication that it becomes harmful, will he/she take financial responsibility for their health care when he/she becomes severely debilitated and needs constant care? Will he/she make provisions for the children he/she brought into this world and can no longer take care of?

Will he/she take precautions to make sure he/she doesn't harm anyone else while under the influence of a mind-altering substance? People can become pretty violent on PCP for example, and there are a whole lot of things that will mess up your ability to drive or operate heavy machinery.

And how will that work with employment? As it is, we have to make people take random drug tests to make sure they're not flying planes or driving buses while drunk. Will employers or employees have to foot the bill for the whole battery of drug tests people will have to pass to make sure they are not high on whatever they want to put in their bodies?

Controlled substance laws are only partly intended to protect you from you. The other part is protecting the rest of us from you and from having to take care of you when you permanently mess yourself up.

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0
User voted Yes.
0 votes,
May 20, 2017

I have said in other posts, not this one, that if you use something you can't use diminished capacity as a defense. After all they took said drug knowing it would do something. BTW I include alcohol in that also, hurt someone while driving drunk, you can't say I was drunk and I'm not responsible, sorry that's not an excuse.

As far as employment, most jobs that involve heavy machinery, driving, flying, and many that don't already have drug testing. In my job, I'm randomly tested as do most other jobs. so really it's a non-issue. DOT, FAA, etc all require drug test.

"Controlled substance laws are only partly intended to protect you from you."

And that logic could be used to ban almost anything, you can't drive a motorcycle, because of the danger involved, and it increased medical cost. Can't mountain climb, skydive, swim, can't drink soft drinks, eat certain foods, etc. after all we are only trying to protect you from yourself.

" The other part is protecting the rest of us from you and from having to take care of you when you permanently mess yourself up.'

See my response to noah364, basically if you didn't set up a plan ahead of time, you die. Sorry, but if you are an adult and don't have insurance to cover whatever you decided to do, you can't expect the rest of use to pay for your care.

Basically this comes down to freedom, are you and adult and are free to do things that aren't healthy, that might hurt or kill you or should the government, be your mommy and daddy and tell you no.

edit side to said sorry

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0
0 votes,
May 21, 2017

"And that logic could be used to ban almost anything, you can't drive a motorcycle, because of the danger involved, and it increased medical cost. Can't mountain climb, skydive, swim, can't drink soft drinks, eat certain foods, etc. after all we are only trying to protect you from yourself."

What we're talking about here is using prescription drugs without having the knowledge that a doctor or pharmacist would have. It would be more analogous to grabbing a parachute and jumping out of a plane without taking skydiving lessons, or getting on a motorcycle and taking to the streets without a helmet and without having so much as practiced riding said motorcycle in a parking lot, let alone having taken a safety course---or passed a test for a license. All of the things you mentioned can be done safely with proper knowledge and preparation. What we're talking about in this discussion is removing the knowledgeable experts from the equation. Doctors and pharmacists study for years to develop their knowledge and even then are not allowed to prescribe for themselves. You want people to just be able to go to the store armed with the "knowledge" that they received from a website or no knowledge at all and buy any drug they want? You don't see how dangerous that is?

Also, my point about the drug testing is that the testing would have to be way more expansive and probably more expensive. Companies would have to do tests for a much broader range of substances that could have mind-altering effects.

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0
User voted No.
0 votes,
May 4, 2017

To add to Philip's point, there's also the issue of healthcare costs.

My guess? If you fill yourself up with unprescribed but normally prescription strength pills, your insurance won't cover it if/when you mess up and hurt yourself.

If you can afford to pay without insurance then that's fine. You're flushing your own health and money down the toilet, and you should be free to do so.

But a whole lot of people can't afford to pay without insurance. For them? They're going to be treated in the emergency room. They won't be able to pay for their treatment. And then to compensate the hospitals have to pass those costs onto you and me, the people who CAN pay.

This has been the problem with insurance in general in this country. Because not everyone has insurance, people wait until they're too sick to be able to function, and then use the emergency room to obtain care. That makes health care costs go up when they inevitably can't pay, which means more people can't afford to go to the doctor, and you get a vicious cycle.

Allowing people to administer drugs themselves would only make the problem worse. Inevitably the people who try to treat themselves will be the lower classes who can't afford to consult a doctor, and when they inevitably screw it up (precisely because they aren't a doctor) everyone else (like you and me) will take the financial fall for it.

So on principle, I agree with you. Do whatever you want with your body. As long as you don't affect anybody else, that's a basic freedom that you should have. But the moment your bodily freedom starts increasing my healthcare costs, possibly to the point where I can no longer afford the healthcare I need, then it's time to slow down and put some rules into place (by "my" and "I" here, I mean the middle class generally).

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0
User voted No.
0 votes
Jun 3, 2017

No! If doctors can't even get it 100% right every time, the general public (who have little to no knowledge of how these drugs can interact with each other and with the body) couldn't possibly be trusted to self medicate. Heck, we can't even trust the general populace with Sudafed because they create meth with it. If anything, prescription drugs need to be controlled even more fiercely. There is a huge problem with prescription narcotics in Indiana that would be alleviated if doctors would not give out dangerous opiods.

Not to mention the potential for violence that this could cause.

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