...and even for us, there are side effects. Concerta made me irritable and I wouldn't eat anything. I know someone who was on Focalin for a while and they suffered from awful mood swings and depression. I've been on the same dose of Vyvanse for 10 years and I still get occasional mood swings.
I'm not on anything, and I get occasional mood swings too. ;)
My point: For many of these substances, I'm perfectly capable of managing my own dosing, side-effects, and knowledge resources without a government-mandated overseer. Maybe the solution is to deregulate & facilitate access to knowledge providers, but not enforce more regulation.
I think we should get rid of the Controlled Substances Act and the DEA. Everything should be available over the counter from a pharmacist on request. (I'd still involve the pharmacist because they're a professional at identifying drug interactions and such, but you shouldn't require a scrip to get access to medication.)
But in your original comment you asked if there is any evidence that there is adverse effects from excess prescriptions. And, well, there's plenty of adverse effects from meth use (source: every trailer park in small town America). And studies have shown that the amphetamines commonly prescribed for ADHD produce an indistinguishable high amongst recreational users.
So if you made these drugs unscheduled and available over the counter, you'd basically just replace drug cartels and your local dealer with the Pharma industry and your local CVS. Which don't get me wrong, is a massive fucking improvement! I'm all for that. But you'd certainly also have a heck of a lot of meth-heads wrecking their lives with over-the-counter meds.
Any such legalization and normalization would require active community support and intervention to help substance abusers too.
My only resistance to that idea is this: Passing that law would invariably result in some deaths.
Sure, it would primarily be the people who had no control over themselves in the face of their addictions, but making all drugs legal would cause many, many people to either overdose or to keep taking the drugs until they died from secondary effects.
If that could be mediated, I am all for full legalization of all drugs, including "hard" drugs like cocaine and heroin.
Other countries have done similar things and found a decrease in usage among both new and previous users, a decrease in overall drug-related deaths, a decrease in drug-related crime, and an increase in rehabilitation.
I may not approve of using drugs myself, but I think what I do with myself is my business and what others do with themselves is their business. I would prefer for things to be as good as they can be with the goal of getting better, and broad scale legalization has strong potential to be a step in the right direction.
Not passing that law has already resulted in needless deaths (lookup the history of HIV antivirals and the FDA to see what I mean). Don't forget to account for the opportunity cost of inaction.
I can't quite classify it but I feel that there is an ethical line between the deaths that are occurring because of a person's flaunting of a law and the deaths that would occur because of a law being changed.
As a terrible analogy, if we made it against the law to wear seat belts, some people would die who would not otherwise die.
Most people would continue to wear seat belts anyway as they are aware that wearing a seat belt is far safer than not wearing a seat belt.
Further, it makes sense that a large portion of those people who would die would be the ones that weren't wearing seat belts to begin with regardless of the law, but it stands to reason that some percentage of people who die would be people who would have worn seat belts but chose not to because it was no longer illegal to drive without a seat belt.
I feel there would be a similar outcome to mass drug legalization. Most people would have no change in their lives. Some people who were subconsciously mid-drug induced suicide would continue on and die quicker thanks to the ease of access and legalization, but there would be some people who, without the legal issues and difficulty of obtaining the drugs being an inhibitor would then choose to indulge, and some fraction of those people may overdose or otherwise harm themselves where they would have been protected by the current status quo.
It's hard to navigate mentally but I feel confident in the statement even if it is not fully formed.
I'm also on Vyvanse. Side effects are thankfully minimal compared to some of the horror stories I've heard. But I do have trouble sleeping, routinely rub my tongue raw from bruxism, and if I accidentally have any caffeine I feel like my heart is going to explode. But it is way better than being off medication.
