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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!ucbvax!ucsfcgl!arnold
From: arnold@ucsfcgl.UUCP (Ken Arnold%CGL)
Newsgroups: net.legal,net.med
Subject: Re: Where are drugs (opiates) legal?
Message-ID: <783@ucsfcgl.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 3-Mar-86 20:49:07 EST
Article-I.D.: ucsfcgl.783
Posted: Mon Mar  3 20:49:07 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 5-Mar-86 04:07:21 EST
References: <156@proper.UUCP> <12057@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <915@felix.UUCP>
Reply-To: arnold@ucsfcgl.UUCP (Ken Arnold)
Organization: UCSF Computer Graphics Lab
Lines: 27
Keywords: drugs, opiates, heroin, morphine
Xref: watmath net.legal:3033 net.med:3511

In article <915@felix.UUCP> daver@felix.UUCP (Dave Richards) writes:
>This is getting off the track of the original posting, but one of my pet
>peeves is the fact that penicillin is not available over the counter (or
>any effective antibiotic, that I know of).  Is this due to pressure from
>the A.M.A., to force people to see their doctors, or what?  It seems rid-
>iculous to have to go to the doctor and pay a small fortune, when you
>already know what's wrong with you and what you need to fix it.

The argument I've heard advanced for this is that one can develop
resistence to antibiotics if used regularly, and doctors claim that, if
people who didn't know what they were doing used it on relatively
harmless problems (or ones with other solutions), the penicillin will
be ineffective if something serious comes up.

As a fer-instance, penicillin is actually useful in treating acne.  I
can just imagine teenagers buying lots of penicillin to treat their
facial problems, and then, if they get VD or something else, be forced
to use less effective treatments.  Considering the (in)ability of many
people in this country to rationally weigh personal appearance against
personal harm, not to mention the bucks to be made in selling effective
acne medicine, I would suspect that this would prove to be a large
problem.

The question really is whether the gov't ought to protect you from this
sort of self-stupidity.

		Ken Arnold