when the federal government allowed direct-to-consumer advertising and looser promotion of off-label use of prescription drugs
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Well, how about letting pharmacies sell directly to consumers? Or should we continue to restrict liberty for the 'public saftey'.
In many instances, I'd be more inclined to trust my pharmacist than my doctor. I have only had doctors hand me prescriptions for things that would kill me three times. The pharmacist knows his drugs better, and is more likely to spot potential interactions between medications.
I don't think there should be any restrictions (i.e. no presecriptions needed, and no ban on direct-to-patient advertising) for any drug that doesn't have significant potential to cause harm to people OTHER than the person taking it. And frankly, if you take the drug alcohol as an unchangeable standard for where that line is drawn, there's practically no drug on the market today which would require a prescription. Alcohol is causing tens of thousands of deaths each year in this country, many of them innocent people who happened to be in the wrong place at the time, and crossed paths with the driving or violent drunk.
Currently, there's no way any drug could even get approval for prescription sale, much less OTC sale, with even a tenth of deaths inflicted by alcohol. There is no rational basis for such a system. And principles of liberty require that adults be allowed to do stupid dangerous things to themselves. If somebody wants to shoot up chemotherapy drugs, because they imagine that the ganglion cyst on their wrist is cancer, and don't want to pay a doctor and lab to find out what it really is, that's their business.