Posted by Mitchell on September 24, 2001, at 6:53:21
In reply to Re: Posting policy » Dr. Bob, posted by Jane D on September 24, 2001, at 2:52:47
> The choice may be between making a last ditch effort to go it alone or giving up completely.
There might be other choices, too, such as between making a last ditch effort to go it alone, and purchasing mail order drugs from an off-shore source then being charged with a crime.
> One thing that really does bothers me about this entire thread is that I feel the legal threats have been made to promote an entirely different, less supportable, agenda as indicated by the quotes below. … They suggest to me that this is really about whether people should be allowed to (and are competent to) make their own health decisions.
Maybe it is about that for some people, but my interest is to protect people's right to make their own health decisions. If people who want to control their own health care are invited to participate in illegal activity, acceptance of self-care could be damaged. If I needed to do something illegal as part of a self-care plan, I would not do it out in public, such as on the Internet, or at least I would be very savvy about how I use the Internet to facilitate something that might be illegal.
Far from being an advocate against self-care, I would rather see a general loosening of controls on healthcare, if we could do it while still having in place systems for quality assurance and as long as low-income clients enjoyed similar quality assurances as would moneyed clients. I also advocate for expanded free speech, including the freedom to encourage people to use substances that are now banned. But reasonable advice for a person maintaining a forum that offers a modicum of free speech would be to not do things that would jeopardize the forum itself.
The risk that people will make a wrong choice if allowed unregulated access to drugs is a legitimate element of the discussion here, though it is not a great concern for me. The same risk clouds a forum such as this with regard to information that might encourage a person to plead with their doctor for an inappropriate medication, or learning in this forum how to report a symptom in proper terms to get a prescription for a medication that prove dangerous or inappropriate.
The real risk, and I think the one the administrator cited, is the risk of providing a forum where people may advocate participation in illegal activity. To be more precise, I don't think the concern is that people will advocate illegal activity, but rather that the forum will be implicated in illegal activity. I think an administrator would do well to consider how an attorney general might view a discussion where amateur diagnoses are coupled with recommendations of medications and instructions about how to get those medications outside the law.
The main concern seems to be that purchase of meds from an off-shore pharmacy without a prescription is illegal. It is also illegal to facilitate such purchases. Providing a forum where people exchange links along with recommendations to try specific medications from those sites could be seen as facilitating and promoting purchases without a prescription. As far as I know, people can offer on these boards reasonable and civil arguments for opiates, for marijuana, for ecstasy, for any other illegal drug, or for any approved or unapproved medication, but they cannot use the board to help people obtain those drugs outside the law.
It seems to me, the best thing a person could do if they want to be allowed to direct people here to offshore pharmacies would be to cite a legal authority (other than the claims of the overseas merchants) that would show why they believe it is legal to import non-scheduled drugs without a prescription.
poster:Mitchell
thread:2069
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20010718/msgs/2112.html