Usually we consider minimizing pointless deaths a benefit, yes. You are free to count decreased deaths as a cost.
Firstly, if I am going to count the costs people pay, I am not going to pick and choose. Everyone counts equally. You are free to use another method. My method is simply that everyone’s costs and everyone’s benefits count equally. Secondly, this is not the correct story. It’s a few innocent bystanders versus a few innocent bystanders, gang-bangers, non-violent offenders, police, military, and citizens of other countries. Maybe you don’t think deaths of police, military, or non-citizens count either.
You can remove the social costs of the drug war without moving all drugs OTC.
I’ve always said that any plant should be freely sold at any farmer’s market or produce section of any store. That covers all of your plant-form drugs (drugs consumed as they naturally occur.)
The reason I don’t want pills or injectables sold by just anyone on the street is I fear the “snake oil salesman” problem. Essentially without some FDA oversight as to the quality of recreational drugs, you’d have people selling snake oil (no buzz) or worse (poison.) As evidence this would actually happen I think it’s fair to point to actual snake oil salesmen of the late 19th century. We didn’t create the FDA out of some random whim, it was created because we really had people pulling that shit.
I’m an advocate of the regulated free market, and the free market argument that people selling bad stuff or poison will get caught and pushed out of the market for selling a bad product (or ostensibly arrested for killing people) wasn’t borne out in actual history. It is too easy to move around, and obfuscate your trail, as well as it is easy to create liability shields in cases in which large companies might be doing this sort of thing.
But you would remove the social costs of the drug war by just allowing all plants be freely sold and all other forms of recreational drugs (basically pills, IV and inhaled drugs) be sold by a licensed manufacturer whose product has to meet certain safety guidelines and require it be sold in a standardized, packaged way.
There is no social cost to making blood pressure medicine, cholesterol medicine, antivirals, antibiotics and etc prescription-only under the belief that people need professional advice to know how to properly use those medicines for medical treatment. So it is a false association to say the social costs of the drug war can only be removed by accepting the social costs of all drugs (even ones not used recreationally) go OTC.
Of course, the production of a material meant for ingestion could be regulated as it is right now without maintaining prohibition and restriction of sale. Meat is inspected, is it not? Tylenol is inspected, is it not?
This would qualify it for OTC, unless I wildly misunderstand you.
Precisely. I’m saying: you could make strictly recreational drugs OTC.
From a legal perspective I’d basically say we’d need to create a specialized labeling system for recreation drugs. Let’s take say, methamphetamine, a drug which had some significant medical uses historically and still retains a small number of conditions for which it can be legally prescribed.
Let some company sell meth for recreational purposes, and sell it with a special label (maybe a similar color for all recreational drugs.) If you buy the drug recreationally there is no requirement for a prescription. However, any drug sold on recreational label you accept (as part of the purchase) that you and your estate have no legal claims against the manufacturer for any ill effects that follow from taking the drug, aside from effects that are a fault in the manufacturing process.
So recreational label drugs, you could sue if it was manufactured accidentally to contain some poison that killed you. But if you just used it all the time and became an addict and lost your job and all your money and then ODed, your family would have no grounds to sue the company.
If the drug is prescribed by a doctor, you buy it under a different label and it’s treated exactly as all prescription drugs are today in regards to what legal rights you have with regard to the manufacturer.
Since all recreational drugs would now be legally on the market, that would end any negative social cost from the drug war. What I’m saying is this is achieved without moving all drugs OTC, since antiviral/antibiotics, cholesterol meds, blood pressure meds are not significantly abused drugs (if they are abused at all) there is no real social cost in enforcement with keeping them prescription. There isn’t much of a black market for drugs that don’t get you high, but keeping them prescription only protects people from improperly dosing themselves. So it’s a situation where you can remove one negative social cost (effects of the drug war) without giving up the social benefit of regulated drugs in which society decides people need medical advice before taking them.
Ahh, this was the aspect I didn’t quite follow in your original post. OK. Thanks for the clarification.
It’s not clear how one stops the other. The relationship seems pretty indirect to me. But you are correct that the impetus to make these OTC is less compelling, as I am also not aware that there is a black market for non-recreational drugs. Still… I don’t know how to actually draw this line. Where would antidepressants fall, for example? They’re not significant drugs of abuse, but if a person is depressed, maybe they’d be better of self-dosing than not going to a doctor and drinking themselves “better” (or something else).
Occasionally, you get some idiot killing themselves by working on their car in a reckless manner, but most people just go to the mechanic. I think there is a wide variety of ostensibly dangerous behavior we trust to specialists, and I would like to hear some more of your analysis as to why this wouldn’t work for prescription drugs specifically. Thanks.
In theory I’d be fine with people being permitted to practice law without any licensure; some people might even do okay at it for simpler things. However, I expect the trained attorneys who pass bar exams will be much sought after in comparison to the charlatans with no real credentials.
The only reason I oppose it is our court systems are bogged down enough as is without tons of novices being part of trials and probably constantly screwing things up and wasting the public court system’s time.
In particular, what stops someone from buying up all the supply of a certain critical drug (say, an innovative cancer treatment) and reselling for a much higher price? Or, just hoarding for their own use? How do you stop the wealthy from controlling drugs for rare diseases?
Some drugs take considerable time to produce and to change production quantity, so normal rules of supply and demand wouldn’t typically apply.
I don’t think there’s any law that obligates a merchant to transact business with you if they don’t want to.
In your scenario I would expect the pharmacist to exercise some restraint. If she’s only got 50 boxes of Amoxicillin left and you ask for all of them, I’d expect her to be willing to sell you one or two, and tell you that if your infection hasn’t cleared up after you’ve finished all that, to come back for a third dose-pack or maybe even send you to a doctor instead.
I am for the OTC access of all drugs, with a few rules of course.
1.Over 18 only naturally, adults only.
2.I have no issue with the pharmacist doing some questioning to make sure the customer understands what they’re buying.
“Hi I’d like 500ml of liquid methadone”
"Sir you understand that this is used only for severe pain and opiat…
“Yea I know what I am buying”
“Fair enough let me go dispense it”
3.They can include info and danger information in all drugs sold.
Well that raises an interesting question. Would the removal of restrictions on purchasing only apply in the retail setting? Or could I join in at the wholesale step and go around the pharmacist before the drugs ever reach the pharmacy.
Pharmacists are there to make money. I don’t get what their motivation would be to not sell me all the Amoxicillin, especially if I am willing to pay a premium.
Finally, most of the drugs that I was thinking of would be administered only/almost only in a hospital setting. Say, expensive chemo drugs. Should those be made available OTC?
Pharmacists are there because they know how to run a pharmacy. They are paid for this skill. People in jobs where they have to serve and help others cannot manage for long if they’re only there to make money.
I understand that this mindset exists, and it is not surprising that if you have it, you really could not understand what motivates people who don’t think like you. But thankfully we don’t yet live in a society where absolutely everyone is only motivated by money.
Nothing—as far as I know—actually stops me from buying sulphuric acid. (Except maybe in Texas or something. LOL drugs war.) Except that I have no need of it. So it is OTC, even though CVS doesn’t carry it. Soldering ovens aren’t forbidden to buy, but you’re not going to find them at WalMart. Just because something isn’t forbidden doesn’t make it compulsory for god’s sake.
Hmmm- you mean, like, almost every high paying medical or legal job? I am sure that there are some benevolent pharmacists but there are also many that are in it simply to make money. This is in the US- perhaps in other countries which pay pharmacists less, or subsidize medical school, the financial motivation is not so great.
Well, good to know this scenario exists is an alternative reality! It makes it much easier to argue your points. By the way, I wouldn’t say people are only motivated by money. But most people are very motivated by a lot of money.
After all, as **Patty O’Furniture **points out, there are other countries in which many, many, if not all, drugs are OTC. You, I am sure, have studies which show that medication related deaths are higher in these countries? Would you mind linking to a few?
The FDA covers OTC drugs, too, though. They’re still tested for efficacy and safety and processing standards. If you want to sell black tar heroin with a Now FDA Approved! blazon, then you have to go through existing channels. Otherwise, it’s poppy tea for all!
When I rule the world, all medicines save antibiotics and antivirals will be sold in vending machines, like a hospital’s Pyxissystem. To access the medication, you’d have to answer a short quiz on the uses, side effects, drug/herb interactions and risks. You have to score 100% to get your pills. You’re allowed to take the quiz as often as you need to, and the computer will even give you educational materials if you’d like.
And if you didn’t want to go through all this, your doctor could write you a prescription, instead, and you could get it filled by the pharmacist. Luddite.
I lived in Saudi for a long time. Most drugs that are prescription here are OTC (and EXTREMELY cheap) there. No narcotics or things like valium and the like but everything else. Antibiotics, including injectible ones were readily available. Steroids SSRIs blood pressure medications, etc. I used to buy huge quantities of steroids for my wife for cancer treatment. If someone was sick they just went to a doc and they (hopefully) figured it out. It might have been different if they were selling strong pain killers or amphetamines but when I lived in Thailand in the early '80s those were OTC there as well. You could ask for “me-qua” which was methyl quaalude and they would cheerfully hand you some. Likewise Valium and similar things.
The point is that none of the doomsday scenarios actually happened. Nobody dropping dead in the streets or killing themselves with overdoses. To me it seems that a lot of the fears are overblown.
