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"Why is it that you NEVER want to comment on the part that licensed doctors play in addicting and killing people? There was an article posted on FR about a year ago that showed that in Florida in 2000( I believe) more people died from prescription drugs than from illegal drugs."

So if I give a dangerous medication to kill a cancer, (which has a 100 percent mortality but a 30 percent mortality if treated with anti cancer medications) and the man dies of pneumonia, I've klled him?

So if I treat patient with overwhelming sepsis with an antibiotic and he dies of an allergic reaction because his body is weak, I've killed him?

So if I give a person a pain medication for a broken leg, and they take ten tablets and wash it down with beer and stop breathing, I've killed him?

If I give narcotics to a patient dying of metastatic cancer, and it requires 300 mgs an hour of morphine to keep him pain free, then I am to be condemned because he's "addicted"?

And if a person steals this gentleman's MSContin from his medicine cabinet and takes six tablets and dies of an overdose, I guess you'd say I killed her too.

Get real. Most "medication related deaths" are in sick people where the risk/benefit ratio is acceptable. You can die of Tylenol, which is one of the safest medicines we have. But most of these "medication" deaths are based on statistics from hostpitals where very very sick people are treated, (i.e. major medical centers) then the statistics are expanded as if the figures were true for community hospitals where mildly sick people are treated. It's a statistical exaggeration, and ignores the fact that many of these patients were critically ill or dying to begin with.

Druggies take drugs to feel good.

Medications are given by doctors so patients can cure their disease and get back to health, or at least to be able to live like a normal person.

Druggies don't want to be normal, they want to be high. That's why druggies kill their souls: They want to feel good, and their lives get twisted around to feel good, not to DO good, i.e. be responsible hard working human beings. They manipulate those around them to get drugs, they lack insight that they are hurting themselves and those around them, and they increase the types and dosages of whatever they take to get the desired high.

When you expound on your aversion to drugs, you inevitably lean getting high, or having an altered state of consciousness. This seems to be your base position when the people here scrub away your reasoning with published facts.

Kindly tell me, what's intrinsically wrong with being "high", euphoric or having an alterered state of consciousness? God says not to? Where does He say that?

If you can't answer that question, how in the world are you able to hold your position?

I'll accept that most doctors have their patients' best interests in mind and that they act in good faith in what they do.

What about the doctors that don't do a good job of finding out what other meds or supplements their patients are tatking? Or simply IGNORE what the patient or family tells them? Not that that ever happens...

Or what about those that prescribe meds like candy and end up getting their patients hooked? Not that that ever happens either, right?

There are, have been, and will be those who cannot handle some aspect of thier lives responsibly. I'm sure that you know better than I that there are very high functioning professionals that take/use/abuse drugs that are not essential to promiting health and fighting disease, who drink alcohol, and/or who smoke pot. Should these people go to jail?

Using a term like "druggie" really is only rheotric and has litle meaning except what you want it to have in any context that can change at your whim.

Do any of us want to see anyone ADDICTED to anything? No, but laws don't stop addiciton, now do they? Heck, the government cannot even keep drugs out of prison, how do you propose that we keep them out of free society?

Remove the criminal penalties and let the families, churches, and non-profit organizations take care of those that cannot/willnot take care of themselves.

As for the moralists here who fancy themselves "conservative", do you agree with Albert Nock when he argues in his essay, "On Doing the Right Thing," that the moral development of the individual is stunted every time the State extends its activity into new areas because the area available for the unhindered and free exercise of the human moral faculties is thus reduced.

In fact, he argues, in moral philosophy there is a fundamental assumption that individuals are responsible for their actions. It makes no sense to say that an individual should or should not do something on moral grounds (e.g. place a bet on a football game) if that individual cannot freely choose between different courses of action (if betting is illegal).

Nock argues that literally there can be no such thing as morality unless one has the freedom to choose between alternatives, without external sources of coercion.

Conservative writers and thinkers throughout history have decried the nanny mentality that moral purists would impose on society. There is no conservative principal which can be utilized to defend the Central Governments War on Drugs.