I agree that drugs should be regulated, but that regulation should be primarily about ensuring that they are effective, safe when taken as instructed, and that they contain the ingredients they say that they do and don't contain ingredients that aren't listed.

It is not the government's responsibility, nor should it be, to try to solve the fact that someone can do something stupid with medication and harm themselves. Medication, by its very nature, interacts with and changes your body: that's the entire point. There is no way for something to be effective and also impossible to abuse or misuse. Regulating drug safety should always be based on following the instructions for how to use that drug.

That's not to say we can't do more the educate people, but ignorance should not lead to inaccessibility. There are tens of millions of people in this country that are fully capable of reading a box and following instructions and they should not have to live a worse quality of life because some people are not willing or able to do so.

We don't have to prevent people from being stupid, but we do want to mitigate it, because medicine is supposed to be accessible to everyone, and part of the safety profile of a medication plainly is the ability for it to be administered safely.

> safe when taken as instructed

Part of that means that instructions and ingredients should be clear.

I am educated and knowledgeable and a trip to the pharmacy is more complicated than it needs to be. You damn near have to pick up every damn box to see what is actually in things, if your pharmacy doesn't have things locked up, and half of the time I ask a pharmacist for pseudoephedrine even they give me combination drugs instead.

I don't think we should take anything off the shelf (except oral phenylephrine). If anything, I think we should make more drugs available OTC.