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Comment by nekusar | Hacker News Reader

All drugs should be legal, full stop. And I should be able to get medical drugs on my own, without a permission slip from a doctor I have to convince.

Drug prohibition has caused magnitudes more harm than decriminalization and legalization.

And part of this article is about claims from what is likely inert or mild effect at best. Remember, we used to have amphetamines, pseudoephedrine, and much more potent drugs to alleviate colds and such. But because of the forever-drug-war , we're stuck with substandard crap, and everything good gatekept by doctors.

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The article is not about "should people be allowed to buy this product because it's potentially dangerous/addictive/etc" but "Should the company be allowed to sell this product because it consists of acetaminophen plus two useless ingredients and is basically a scam".

Agree with you. It is a collateral consequence of the War on Drugs™ that everything good and effective is getting locked behind a $50-$200 doctor's visit for a 'scrip. This scam medicine problem could be helped if a bunch of substances were moved out of Rx and back to OTC. The nanny state will continue to grow to meet people's definitions on how much others should be warded.

Read the article. It doesn’t even ask if dextromethorphan and phenylephrine should be illegal. It asks if intentionally misleading consumers about their efficacy should be.

Are you sure you have read the article, not just its title?

Yes, and the question lends itself to control (or lack of) by relevant medical "authorities".

I honestly do not trust somebody with a doctor license who I talked to for 7 minutes out of 259200 minutes (6 months).

For example, when I went on a camping trip, I got bit by 15 ticks. After I got back, went to doc for 15 day doxycyclene, gold standard. And its cheap, like $15. NOPE, fucker wanted the ticks in a bag to grind up and waste a $400 Lyme test. And that test is only 60% accurate, tons of false negatives.

If I could have, I would have bought doxy, scaled it to my weight, and did the 15 day run.

But nope. I ended up getting the second recommended, amoxicilian as "fish antibiotics".

One of the reasons doxycyclene is so effective is because it's less overprescribed. Antibiotic resistance is a real thing, and the day we run out of viable ones is going to be ugly. Having a gatekeeper isn't a bad idea.

To add to this, despite all efforts to educate people, many STILL don't know that antibiotics don't work against viruses and will want one when dealing with a cold or other viral infection.

If we let antibiotics be over-the-counter, every damn infectious bacteria will be a super-strain in a year.

Antibiotics are routinely given to all of their farm animals as part of their food, for prophylaxis. But allowing humans to buy when they're sick is somehow the super-strain-end-of-times??

Antibiotics stop bacteria. Antivirals stop viruses.

Except bacteria can be attacked whenever, the sooner the better.

Antivirals need a rapid and early timeframe to work. Getting a fucking doctor to say yes is almost always too long, and you missed your treatment window. That is unless you go the ER, and lucky to not get shoved aside. Then pay $$$$$

Those are two separate issues and we obviously should not be just giving feedstock and animals antibiotics constantly. That's no good for anyone.

Maybe the better solution is that the government should be paying for the Lyme test as a public health measure. Knowing which areas it is spreading too is extremely important.

And on the flip side I know someone whose father got Lyme but didn't know it for years - he was not very symptomatic at first and ended up with major nerve damage. Not one to mess around with

> Antibiotics are routinely given to all of their farm animals as part of their food, for prophylaxis.

That's also a problem [0]; and it's one that can't be solved by creating a second, somewhat related problem.

0: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11200672/

That's why I went amoxycillan. I can buy medical grade as "fish antibiotics".

Alpha-gal wasn't prevalent then. It was primarily Lyme and rocky mountain spotted fever. Doxy and amox is the gold/silver standard for both.

I don't need a fucking doctor to tell me I was bitten by 15 ticks. I removed them myself with a tick puller. I don't need to he told that I probably got a disease from at least 1 of them. So yeah, its either going to cure the infection before it starts up, or is a prophylactic to prevent it.

And in more sane countries, I can go in a pharmacy, tell the pharmacist and reasonablely and cheaply treat myself. US? Not so much.

But, I can smoke delta8, tobacco, and drink until my lungs and liver give out. But how dare I take some antibiotics when I need them.

You make a good argument for expanded use for true "OTC" meds (Over the Counter - as in can't be sold on the shelf in bulk but has to be given by an actual Pharmacist).

I generally agree, but it seems darkly comical to be worried about gatekeeping antibiotics as a tick disease prophylactic when the vast majority of antibiotics are applied non-therapeutically to farm animals.

So what you're saying (and I agree with) is that antibiotics aren't gate kept *enough*

When an article has a misleading clickbait title, I think it's fair game to redirect the conversation to the subject of the title.

What is the argument for legalizing drugs that are contraindicated for all medical purposes, are toxic, and have a high addictive potential? How does it benefit me or society if my neighbor is permitted to choose to basically roll the dice on afflicting themselves with a debilitating chronic illness (severe addiction)? If I don’t want to do illegal drugs why would I ant to support this?

- People that want to do drugs already can buy them, with worse quality and the with the side-effect of funding crime at a planetary scale.

- Alcohol, tobacco & weed are already legal... why them and no other drugs? Check how many deaths do alcohol & tobacco provoke.

- Taxes, lots of taxes, literal mountains of money... a small percentage of which can be redirected to treating addicts.

I went to a southeast asian country and got a staph infection. I walked down to the pharmacy, asked the pharmastst for a topical and an oral antibiotic. 3 days later i was healed, continued the course the rest of the week and that was it. $12 dollars american.

I got another staph infection previously in the united states. Needed to go to a doc in the box who misdiagnosed it. A few days went by and i needed to go to another doc in the box who gave me topical and trued to give me a steroid shot. Needless to say it progressed and turned into fullblown MRSA which required admitance and a IV antibiotic. Extremely painful. I don't have the ability to add the costs but north of $10k easily.

That's why drugs should be legalized.

I'm sorry that happened to you. Sincerely. That sounds incredibly frustrating, painful, and scary.

I think your maximalist conclusion of "drugs should be legalized" might have some second-order effects that might be net worse for society, though. Addiction, misuse, MRSA, overdoses, etc.

But it's part of this world. Who is to say who can participate in aspects of the world?

How do you contrast this stance with say, Vietnam, where drug prescriptions are not required? Is their society collapsing?

It’s almost like there are other factors at play, and our system is an inadequate band-aid on those issues that has its own side effects.

Okay question was about drugs that are contraindicated for all medical purposes like heroin.

Also do you see any ironic connection between your two examples: easily accessible antibiotics and a medically resistant infection?

>"What is the argument for legalizing drugs that are contraindicated for all medical purposes, are toxic, and have a high addictive potential?

> That's why drugs should be legalized.

And dead men tell no tales.

Particularly the tales on why they shouldn't be legalized.

Legal status of these chemicals is not going to prevent your neighbor from getting them and becoming addicted.

Legal status (along with stigma associated with it) does prevent them from getting help before completely crashing out. It has the additional side effect of whatever portion of their lives they come out of it with being completely destroyed by the legal process. You know, because chronic illness obviously deserves punishment.

So I guess the real question is: what is the goal? Help chronic illness, or punish people that do things we don't like?

Also, don't we already have laws for literally all the bad things someone can do while addicted? If not, then why is it bad just because they are suffering from a chronic illness?

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