1) Had never thought about prescription drugs as illegal! At 9:39, Szasz compares getting a prescription for drugs to getting gov't permission to emigrate from the Soviet Union or any country. If you have to ask, it's not free. Light bulb on high beams!!
2) Nice distinction, too at 9:45, that the government grants access to drugs only if we "need" them, not because we "want" them.
3) We think the only function of drugs is to make a sick person healthy. People take drugs to make us feel "better," either to stimulate or to settle our nerves. Also religious reasons for taking drugs. What about conviviality! Smoking, a brew, a couple of glass of cabernet sovignon.
Also use drugs to enhance capacities instead of disable themselves.
Nothing wrong with anebolic steroids to make people perform better or run faster. Prayer is one kind of drug from which someone derives strength.
4) 50 years it used to be illegal to mention birth control. Has nothing to do with health, but how you regulate your life. No more medical than abortion.
5) War on Drugs started with the Pure Food and Drug Law. Drugs are a matter of self-control. What we need the gov't for . . . is to protect us from dangers--external (enemies) and internal (criminals). Until 1906, people could sell virtually anything both in terms of food and drugs. You could buy liver pills, cocaine, morphine, anything. Then media said people ought to know what's in the bottle. If you had a tuberculosis cow, you could not sell the milk or meat. Protection from force and fraud.
Supreme Court decision in 1911 in which Sullivan tried to sell a product that promised to cure anemia to cancer. Labeling only pertains only to what is in the bottle, not to what ingesting will do to you.
6) By the end of the second world war, drugs laws enacted to protect you from yourself.
7) Eliminate criminalization, medicalization, legalization of drugs so that we can have a real free market in drugs. Regulated free market just such as one that exists in selling tomatoes and green peppers.
8) Caveat Emptor is missing in our society. Can't have it both ways--can't have a free market and legal protections to sue people at a whim.
Wow, excellent presentation!! Take-aways:
ReplyDelete1) Had never thought about prescription drugs as illegal! At 9:39, Szasz compares getting a prescription for drugs to getting gov't permission to emigrate from the Soviet Union or any country. If you have to ask, it's not free. Light bulb on high beams!!
2) Nice distinction, too at 9:45, that the government grants access to drugs only if we "need" them, not because we "want" them.
3) We think the only function of drugs is to make a sick person healthy. People take drugs to make us feel "better," either to stimulate or to settle our nerves. Also religious reasons for taking drugs. What about conviviality! Smoking, a brew, a couple of glass of cabernet sovignon.
Also use drugs to enhance capacities instead of disable themselves.
Nothing wrong with anebolic steroids to make people perform better or run faster. Prayer is one kind of drug from which someone derives strength.
4) 50 years it used to be illegal to mention birth control. Has nothing to do with health, but how you regulate your life. No more medical than abortion.
5) War on Drugs started with the Pure Food and Drug Law. Drugs are a matter of self-control. What we need the gov't for . . . is to protect us from dangers--external (enemies) and internal (criminals). Until 1906, people could sell virtually anything both in terms of food and drugs. You could buy liver pills, cocaine, morphine, anything. Then media said people ought to know what's in the bottle. If you had a tuberculosis cow, you could not sell the milk or meat. Protection from force and fraud.
Supreme Court decision in 1911 in which Sullivan tried to sell a product that promised to cure anemia to cancer. Labeling only pertains only to what is in the bottle, not to what ingesting will do to you.
6) By the end of the second world war, drugs laws enacted to protect you from yourself.
7) Eliminate criminalization, medicalization, legalization of drugs so that we can have a real free market in drugs. Regulated free market just such as one that exists in selling tomatoes and green peppers.
8) Caveat Emptor is missing in our society. Can't have it both ways--can't have a free market and legal protections to sue people at a whim.