lI1|1! Posted January 25, 2007 Author Posted January 25, 2007 I don't understand your logic here. i was joking. careful. if this gets out it will eliminate 95% of spray. Quote
chucK Posted January 25, 2007 Posted January 25, 2007 eliminated this thread it looks like! I was just wondering what these decriers of the nanny state think of the governmental limitation of distribution of prescription drugs to anybody but licensed providers. This sure seems like a case of the government stepping into our business of what we do with our bodies. They are forcibly affecting the decisions we make. It is not a "voluntary" agreement with industry as is this egregious Spanish model case. It is a mandatory governmental regulation trying to protect us from making uninformed decisions. Why shouldn't we let the free market take care of prescription drug distribution? Quote
PLC Posted January 25, 2007 Posted January 25, 2007 Why shouldn't we let the free market take care of prescription drug distribution? We should. The pharmacy-doctor prescription alliance is not meant to protect us from anything except cheap prices and self-care. Every time I've need a prescription medicine, I've known what drug I specifically wanted, I knew more about my specific condition than the doctor, and I still am not able to just go buy drugs for myself. You should go to a doctor to get a diagnosis, and you should go to a drug store to buy drugs. I'm not sure what one has to do with the other. In the cases of dangerous drugs, they should be treated like we treat all dangerous chemicals. Hint: we don't regulate dynamite because we're worried about someone blowing themselves up. Quote
olyclimber Posted January 25, 2007 Posted January 25, 2007 http://www.komotv.com/news/5359116.html I'm sorry to report that Dung and his buddies got busted. Quote
foraker Posted January 25, 2007 Posted January 25, 2007 Why shouldn't we let the free market take care of prescription drug distribution? Because big pharma wouldn't make such huge profits then and what would that do to political campaign contributions and the revolving door between Congress and industry? Madness! Quote
PLC Posted January 25, 2007 Posted January 25, 2007 Actually, my wife used to work for "big pharma" - Merck, specifically, and I can assure you that they were not really in favor of prescription control at all. It was in their financial interests to get their drugs sold OTC, so if the entire prescription nonsense went away, big pharma would make MORE money. The only people who benefit financially from the prescription requirement are doctors and pharmacists. Which is why it is doctors and pharmacists who primarily argue in favor of more regulation. More regulation = more money for them. Less regulation = more money for "big Pharma". Quote
chucK Posted January 25, 2007 Posted January 25, 2007 Exactly. Big pharma is all for drug patenting law (another egregious case of govt. intervention into the free market?) Quote
PLC Posted January 25, 2007 Posted January 25, 2007 The only reason big pharma needs drug patents is the fact that the complete chemical composition of their products has to be made public record before they are allowed to sell them. For instance, if Coke was forced to give up it's "secret formula", don't you think they would want patent protection? Instead, they get a better deal - they are allowed to keep their formula secret and they don't have a patent. Patents expire, secrecy does not. I'm 100% positive that if Merck was allowed to keep the composition of their drugs and manufacturing processes secret, that they would gladly sacrifice all their patent protection. Without secrecy or patent protection, why would they spend hundreds of millions of dollars developing drugs? Quote
foraker Posted January 25, 2007 Posted January 25, 2007 Actually, my wife used to work for "big pharma" - Merck, specifically, and I can assure you that they were not really in favor of prescription control at all. It was in their financial interests to get their drugs sold OTC, so if the entire prescription nonsense went away, big pharma would make MORE money. The only people who benefit financially from the prescription requirement are doctors and pharmacists. Which is why it is doctors and pharmacists who primarily argue in favor of more regulation. More regulation = more money for them. Less regulation = more money for "big Pharma". Hey, now. Don't go spoiling a perfectly good conspiracy theory.... Quote
JayB Posted January 25, 2007 Posted January 25, 2007 So it seems like the Chuck position is that if one is against one form of government intrusion - like the granting the government the right to control what you can say without being imprisoned - one must be against any government regulation of anything, because no freedoms are any more vital or worthy of rational protection in a free society than others. If you oppose legal sanctions that restrict speech, then you are thereby obligated to oppose restrictions on murder, because that too involves the government restriction on the scope of your freedoms, and per your argument you can't oppose restrictions on one without opposing restrictions on the other without contradicting yourself. Am I misreading you here, or is there more to the argument that you repeat over-and-over-and-over whenever anyone suggests that there are reasonable limits to the scope of the government's power? Related point: I am all for complete legalization of all drugs, for prostitution, etc. IMO anything that a mentally competent adult chooses to do to themselves, or anything that two or more mentally competent adults consent to do to one another should be legal. The point at which the public has any say in this begins once it is no longer occurring within a private space. There's no law against being naked in your own home, there are laws against being naked in public. There is no essential contradiction between believing that all private consensual behavior that only affects the participants should be legal, and that it's within the proper scope of the government's power to place restraints on what you are free to do once you leave your own home or other private space, or on your interactions with non-consenting parties. In this arena, some restrictions are vital to preserving liberty, others are detrimental to it, so one can support the former and object to the latter without there being any fundamental inconsistency whatsoever. With regards to the harmful potential of pharmaceuticals, I can get my hands on thousands of harmful compounds at the hardware store, but the fact I don't snort Drano has nothing to do with whether or not it's legal. I see no reason to believe that the entire country would rush in and start mainlining fentanyl if there weren't laws in place to prevent it. Quote
tvashtarkatena Posted January 25, 2007 Posted January 25, 2007 I'm only killing myself if I get addicted? That only works if you have no friends or family or children and you never drive under the influence and that the public health services and public safety officials have no legal, moral, or financial responsibility for you. If you can die by yourself without endangering anyone, without harming your family, and without costing Joe Taxpayer a cent...well, go for it! Europe's drug policies have proven that ours are archaic, expensive, and achieve the opposite of a drug free, crime free society. Our abuse and addiction rates, and drug related crime rates are signicantly higher, despite an incredibly expensive, 30 year "war on drugs". With over half of all the imprisoned (over a million people) convicted of non-violent drug related crimes, clearly something is wrong here. Possessing, taking, or being addicted to a drug should not be illegal, just as it is not for alcohol. There is no crime there. If the person commits a crime while under the influence, we already have statutes with which to prosecute. Health care insurance may choose to up premiums or cancel based on drug addiction, just as they do now for many other maladies. America should be focusing on what really matters, which is reducing crime, not drug use. Having said that, we'd be much better off if we treated addicts through public programs rather than send them to prison. Many might remain addicts, but they'd cost us much less, commit far fewer crimes, and not become hardened criminals while in the slammer, as is so often the case nowadays. I know, mine is a purely pragmatic viewpoint, and we live in a puritanical culture where private, self destructive behavior cannot be tolerated (even though we do more so than countries with more liberal drug laws), but there you have it. Quote
foraker Posted January 25, 2007 Posted January 25, 2007 Personally, I'm all for legalization and taxation of all drugs, just like for alcohol. If Fairweather were here, I'd also note I don't use them myself and I don't teach children..... Quote
JayB Posted January 25, 2007 Posted January 25, 2007 Tvash is on a roll today. Nice to see some fusion between the old-school classical liberalism and it's modern American counterpart from time to time. It causes me great pain to see that folks like Chuck get to call themselves liberals when what they believe represents the polar opposite of the beliefs that the philosophy of Liberalism was founded upon. I guess that socialist-state-interventionist doesn't roll off the tongue quite as easily, but it would be nice if there were an accurate shorthand term for this kind of a person that didn't misappropriate a name that had its origins in a philosophy that I'm fond of. Quote
tvashtarkatena Posted January 25, 2007 Posted January 25, 2007 I was just wondering what these decriers of the nanny state think of the governmental limitation of distribution of prescription drugs to anybody but licensed providers. This sure seems like a case of the government stepping into our business of what we do with our bodies. They are forcibly affecting the decisions we make. Licensing drugs by government isn't much different than insuring restaurants aren't serving rat and calling it chicken. It's in the public's best interests to know that they're getting a) what they think they're getting and b) something that's been tested to the point where its efficacy and risks are known. This is an important safeguard against returning to the days of patent medicine, where chicanery ruled the day. As for illegal drugs, pot should be legal and unregulated (for adults), just like making your own beer. As for harder chemical drugs that can kill you if cut with various substances, licensing and dosage restrictions might be in order. Quote
chucK Posted January 25, 2007 Posted January 25, 2007 So it seems like the Chuck position is that if one is against one form of government intrusion - like the granting the government the right to control what you can say without being imprisoned - one must be against any government regulation of anything, because no freedoms are any more vital or worthy of rational protection in a free society than others. Where did you get this ridiculous idea? I believe that it is quite reasonable to prohibit some kinds of "rights" while holding up others. I just wanted to get an idea of where you "rage against the nanny machine" guys fall. I thought a good place to start was if you thought the restriction on heroin was an unreasonable govt. incursion into our liberties. I will assume that your statement "I am all for complete legalization of all drugs, for prostitution, etc. ", implies an answer in the affirmative. Thank you for your reply. Now to move down the ladder a little bit. What about offering heroin for sale to consenting adults? Quote
archenemy Posted January 25, 2007 Posted January 25, 2007 This socratic questioning gets so drab. I feel like a shot of heroin. Quote
JayB Posted January 25, 2007 Posted January 25, 2007 Just from the way you typically react anytime anyone questions whether or not a new law that's been conceived to benefit the public will A) actually do so B) may not have other undesirable consequences that far outweigh the proposed benefit. That and the reaction that ensues anytime someone suggests that any of the myriad of personal problems - from obesity to addiction - originate in the actions of the afflicted. This is my perception of you based on your comments here over the course of several years. You are free to dispute it. Selling heroin to consenting adults is entailed within the "complete legalization of all drugs" statement. Quote
chucK Posted January 25, 2007 Posted January 25, 2007 OK. Follow-up withdrawn. And JayB, I would love to cause you pain by calling myself a liberal. But have I ever done so? I am a liberal!! OUch! And I don't give a shit if your perception of my politics doesn't jibe with some arcane definition of a word that you're mistakenly thinking I've used to describe myself. You sound like Dwayner getting all in a twit about boulderers daring call themselves "climbers". Quote
JayB Posted January 25, 2007 Posted January 25, 2007 Sounds like you are getting a bit aggressive here, Chuck. Perhaps you should log-out and start using the Al_Pine avatar. Step back from the keyboard and dream of a society where the government has the power to outlaw all images of skinny models and fast-food. You'll feel better. Quote
chucK Posted January 25, 2007 Posted January 25, 2007 I don't think you even read my responses. I think I wrote that I didn't have a problem with the govt. working with people to voluntarily self-regulate, but that mandatory restrictions would be troubling. I've never advocated fast-food bans. Aggressive? Did the word liberal hurt your eyes? Maybe we should call a moderator and get this cleaned up! Quote
Al_Pine Posted January 25, 2007 Posted January 25, 2007 fuck you Jayb you baby-eating fucking fuck Quote
olyclimber Posted January 25, 2007 Posted January 25, 2007 ALL THREE OF YOU ARE ON NOTICE! I'M FEELING LIKE PLAYING GAWD. AND EVERYONE KNOWS THAT GAWD IS A LIBERAL. Quote
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