Um...

There aren't many instances that I can think of where allowing an adult to handle their own legal affairs and make their own legal decisions can affect their own and others' mortality.

As you note, even defendants in death penalty cases - where they can be killed at the end -- have autonomy over their own cases.

And people have the right to refuse medical treatment or not take medication which is necessary to save their lives.

And people are allowed to do all sorts of things that can result in their death - they can drink themselves to death, eat huge amounts of junk food and never exercise, they can hang-glide.

There are all sorts of activities people are free to engage in that are far more threatening to their lives and well-being than taking xanyx.

Whereas any adult can cause their own and/or others' death and/or serious physical harm literally within minutes by using prescription drugs improperly. E.g. ODing on morphine or Demarol, causing a car accident on Xanax, destroying their internal organs on a host of drugs, physically harming if not killing their children on improperly used drugs, inducing psychosis that might lead to causing harm to others, etc.

People can OD on drugs they obtain by prescription as well - or even over-the-counter products. And people can - and do - engage in all sorts of dangerous behavior when they consume alcohol.

I think that the difference lies in the sort of harm one can do to oneself and/or others by taking ones legal matters into one's own hand vs. taking the use of prescription drugs into one's own hands. The former is generally likely to be limited to the legal and financial domain (e.g. by refusing the advice of counsel, you could lose certain legal rights, your life savings and assets, perhaps be incarcerated, etc.). Whereas the latter can easily cross into the domain of life and death consequences to oneself and/or others. I realize that in rare, capital crime cases, one's own life could of course be at stake, but compared to the potential of drugs to cause harm and/or death, that would clearly be vastly rarer.

Is becoming bankrupt, or being imprisoned for a few decades, really sufficiently harmless as compared to the consequences of misusing drugs that we allow people freely to risk the former than the latter?

I do not have a right to drive a car without being tested and licensed (because I may harm myself and/or others without these). I do not (or should not) have a right to buy an AK-47 and a case of ammo without a background check and perhaps some proof that I know how to use it and will only be able to use them in a controlled environment like a gun range. So why should I have the right to consume or give my kids any drug that I feel like taking or giving them, without some certified professionals first making sure that it is warranted?

The "right to give my kids drugs" issue is a red herring, a different matter altogether.

And all the pilot and car driving hypotheticals are red herrings, too. Just like with alcohol, one can easily have laws prohibiting the use of drugs in connection with certain activities (driving, etc.) without banning the use altogether.

I simply don't see how the right to ignore legal advice in any way compares to an imagined right to obtain unobstructed access to prescription drugs. A far more apt comparision would be the right to ignore legal advice being equivalent to the right to ignore medical advice (e.g. lose weight, undergo this procedure). But there are no legal tools that I know of that compare to medical tools like drugs, whose right to use them could be restricted to only being usable through the mediation of an expert. Is there a legal equivalent to, say, Prozac or Lipitor? If there are none, then this is a false comparison.

Why would you favor giving the freedom to people to refuse medical treatment that they need to save their lives, but prohibit them by force of law from taking medications on the ground that it will harm them?

-- kovie

Hope this helps others who are trying to watch/listen. FYI, I'm using Safari on a Mac.

I'm having trouble with the C-SPAN connection - are you, or is anyone? Does anyone know of an alternative site?