As I said people still abuse them, they take double/triple doses or use them to make their own cocktails. The Doctor prescribes them to be used as directed, the patient might have different ideas altogether.
Yes. In this case, it's not the drug that is of itself the problem, but rather the behaviour and psychological traits of the user.
. What I get really upset about is more government intervention on my life.
This is the whole point of my objection also. People need to be encouraged to take responsibility for making their own decisions. The more governments interfere in the personal choices of individuals the more likely it is we will have a nation of zombies, no longer able to think for themselves because they have become accustomed to having their decisions made for them.
As long as you tell or suggest to people that they are incapable of making valid decisions, you are encouraging that mindset. Treating Aboriginal people as victims is a good example. If they were more often told that they had great dignity as a race, and the potential to achieve every bit as much as non-indigenous people, they would at least have a chance of adopting such a positive mindset instead of passively accepting that they are hopeless.
So, if governments effectively say to the population either:
1. You are so hopeless at making the right choices about how you spend your money, we will step in and restrict your capacity to make those choices. This is for your own good.
or
2. A very small proportion of people who gamble have a psychological or psychiatric disorder which predisposes them to taking unreasonable and repeated risks with gambling on poker machines and to becoming addicted to using these devices. Our solution to the problem of this minority is to regulate everyone who also uses these devices and who has no problem whatsoever with so doing.
It's like fluoridating our water supply. Because the people who actually want to take fluoride or need to take it are too lazy or too irresponsible to buy fluoride tablets, the entire population is forced to consume a substance which many do not want in their bodies. This is morally wrong.
Upshot: their should be adequate taxpayer funded psychological assistance for all people with addictive disorders.
Then the government should get the hell out of people's private lives.