Should pharmaceuticals be available to anyone?

[Nuvendil]

theprof00 said:

Nuvendil said:
If you want to see what the idea your proposing looks like, look no further than the psychopharmaceutical industry where any half way competent person can get a prescription for a mood stabilizer, antidepressant, antipsychotic, and several other drugs with basically no effort. Shoot I know one guy who had a psychiatrist prescribe him a mood stabilizer just off hand after a passing mention that he had been anxious lately about his upcoming flight exam. What's the result? People popping psychotropic drugs like candy - drugs that can have lasting negative impact on your brain - who likely don't need any. And of course don't get me started on children with unthinking parents or worse orphans. In many foster homes psychotropic drugs are part and parcel. In these homes orphans can be on as many as 6 to 14 different psychotropic drugs at once. There are children leaving the foster system with permanent brain damage for goodness sake. That's what happens with minimal barrier to acquiring powerful drugs. And is why I disagree with both you and those insisting recreational drugs should be legal. People are stupid and irresponsible.

I did this with bupropion. I found out that it was often prescribed to smoking cessation programs. I had been thinking for a couple years about my own mood and problems within. I went on these and have seen a marked improvement. Havent had panic attacks since I started them.

Good for you.  The problem is - and this is the problem with the whole discussion surrounding doing away with prescriptions or legalizing recreational drugs - you aren't thinking beyond the scope of your own convenience.  Yay, you got hold of a psychotropic drug that helped.  Was that bit of convenience worth the crap storm I described?  is it worth the hundreds of thousands who die every year due to the effects of those drugs?  Many of whom didn't need any but were put on multiples by psychiatrists who are either misinformed, careless, or outright greedy pawns of the psycopharmaceuticals companies.  The lack of regulation and lack of the barrier provided by careful consideration before prescribing them has turned it into a monster of an industry.  And the icing on the cake?  99% (some would argue 100%) of these drugs don't cure a single dang thing.  They merely treat and long term use even leads to needing more drugs on top of the first one. 

tl;dr:  Making drugs in general highly accessible would hurt far more than it would help.  And it would be children and others who don't or can't make the majority of their own medical decisions that would suffer the most.  Have some patience.  Instant gratification for you is not worth the innumerable problems that your proposal would cause.