I agree that a lot of alcohol and drug abuse is self-medication I tend to disagree that those self-medicating do so because of the failure of psychiatric drugs. In most cases these people would do better with Zoloft rather than binge drinking or the like. I do agree that for many some therapy would help as well. Illegal drugs can only help so much and often bring lots of other effects that make things worse. Further in some cases they may make mental illness worse. (Although I don’t know off the top of my head studies on that – just my experience with people caught up in drugs)

You have people supposedly trained in psychology dealing with people often severely – and it’s worthwhile pausing to reflect upon how severe that damage can be – by socioeconomic disadvantage, domestic violence and abuse, all the rest of it, but doing nothing to guide these people to a better life because it’s so much easier and career-enhancing to foist some ludicrous diagnosis on them, prescribe them drug after drug, and generally railroad them into a permanent mental health black hole rather than get them up on their feet.

Most drug users come from a similar background. There are loads of people doing drugs – creating the market – who have been failed by a psychopharmaceutical industrial complex who teach them that medicating yourself is the only option. The psycho-drugs don’t work so these people medicate themselves illegally.

I realise that’s only part of the equation – and doesn’t include Wall Street or City of London financial high rollers living on cocaine highs, even though the consequences of that are now clear as well.

You might be interested in reading about Portugal’s experience with drug legalization. It’s been a nearly-unqualified success, with usage rates down and treatment rates up. Google “drug legalization portugal”.

The drug culture and demographics don’t exactly correlate between the U.S. and Portugal, but their experience I think is something of an indication that liberalizing the U.S.’s punitive drug laws would be a step in the right direction.

I disagree about the drugs issues in that I think there is a lot of benefit to taking drugs. However there is often a marginal rate of return. That is some new drug has marginal utility over an existing (often low cost) drug. Unfortunately many doctors don’t understand this.

That said though I also think that the government needs to invest more money on research on “off label” uses for drugs out of patent and so forth, not to mention substances like Vit-D and so forth. Unfortunately the incentives is to develop new drugs since that’s the only way to leverage most of the money for testing.

So our system is screwy, but the issue really isn’t drugs.

Your point about patients is good too. While in some countries, like Mexico, patients do largely control things. But this has dangerous implications such as abuse of antibiotics. Plus we just have to accept that most of the population is both ignorant and have relatively little common sense. So it’s annoying to those of us who do research and who can make more informed decisions.

Personally I’d love to see our country get away from taking drugs to solve physical problems with our bodies. I know that’s not going to happen, at least any time soon. When it comes to the use of drugs, my feeling shifts from two points. On the one hand, I trust myself to understand what I need for my body and would prefer more control over the choice of medicine. On the other hand, I don’t trust others to do the same. It’s a rather strange feeling. I don’t think it is wise to allow too much control over medicines, particularly addictive ones, to patients. I’m sure pharmaceutical companies would not be too happy about it because of the huge lawsuits they will have to deal with when people overdose and die.

As I prefer to use drugs as little as possible, I don’t have any quarrel with the way the system is currently run, with the exception that I would do all I could to limit the amount of pharmaceutical commercials on TV. I can’t tell you how tired I am hearing about lipitor.

In the case of Michael Jackson, he was given medicine he never should have gotten. The drug “perpefol” or whatever it is called, is apparently (at least according to the “experts” on my television) only to be used in hospitals during like heavy duty surgery. Apparently Mr. Jackson was having real trouble falling asleep. Understandably, seeing how drugged up his body has been for the past 25 years since the Pepsi commercial went kabloey.

The success is to reform our probation system and have mandatory drug tests and only put people in prison for a few days if they are found using. This has several effects. First off it keeps people out of prison where they are turned into hardened criminals. (It’s cheaper too) It also ends the “drug war” as we now have it. But more importantly it leads to these people being the peers of potential criminals. It’s one thing to have someone disappear. It’s quite an other to have people you know as friends have to go home at 8 in the evening because of curfew and then to see them go to jail for a few nights if they use drugs. The evidence is overwhelming that this also has a greater deterrance on drug use than any other program.

That’s what I’d like to see put in place.

I’m all for legalizing, regulating and taxing.

Admittedly many Libertarians do seem more tied to J. S. Mill (from whom my own quasi-libertarian gusts come from) than others like Locke or the like.