Glenn Greenwald poses the following questions about prescription drugs.  Given that I just finished a course of antibiotics, I found it to be rather interesting:

I've always been interested in the topic of prescription drug laws because -- even more than laws which prohibit adults from using recreational drugs -- it seems absolutely unjustifiable for the government to prevent adult citizens from deciding for themselves which pharmaceutical products they want to use. Put another way, it seems unfathomable that competent adults are first required to obtain the "permission" of a doctor before being "allowed" to obtain and consume the medications they think they need -- and that they are committing crimes if they do not first obtain that permission (or, worse, if they try to obtain that permission and are unable to do so).
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Why should your judgment prevail over mine for what I take? Why, as a competent adult, should I need your permission before I can take the substance I decide is best for me?

I ask that, in part, with reference to the attorney-client relationship. Often times in that relationship, there is as much at stake as there is in a doctor-patient relationship -- the individual's life savings, or financial security, or liberty, or even (in the rarest of cases), their life.

Yet the decision about what to do always remains the client's. The lawyer can advise them, warn them, urge them in the strongest possible terms not to opt for Choice X because Choice X is stupid, self-destructive, risky, irrational, etc. But it is always an advisory role, never a parental role where the lawyer can override the client's choice for his own interests. In fact, whether to have or listen to a lawyer at all is completely optional. The client can always proceed purely on his own, even in the weightiest of matters.

In a perfect libertarian world, the answer would be that there would be no federal regulations barring the private purchase of drugs without a prescription.  However, for most of us, even if there were no laws preventing us from buying drugs like these without a prescription, the majority of us would get a prescription anyway.  Why you ask?  Because that is the only way an insurance company would ever pay for it.  Kind of makes the whole argument moot now doesn't it?

Of course, this whole situation is really not that strange.  When you think about the history of medical practice, the idea of a patient having any say in their care is actually rather new.  Not that long ago, it was almost unheard of for a patient to be able to object to a procedure a doctor thought was in their best interest.  After all, what do you know about medicine compared to a doctor?  Then again, what do I know about law compared to a lawyer?

It is my life on the line in the end, not the doctor's or lawyer's.