I think that the crux of the biscuit is: Should the government protect people from their own dumbassery? And an important part of that determination is whether or not that dumbassery affects others, or if the dumbassery is incidental to any effect that might be forced upon others.

The latter I'm more comfortable with personally, and I'd say no. I'm reasonably against anti-drug laws, as I think they cause more harm than good. Lots of people probably went blind during prohibition for drinking wood alcohol because they had no verification that what they were drinking was what it was supposed to be. But now that alcohol is legal again, virtually no one turns to moonshiners and the government can make sure that what people are selling is not dangerous. I feel like more people are hurt by drug impurities than by the drugs themselves. If we could remove the baby laxatives, powdered milk, and talcum powder from heroin or at least make the purity level known, for example, I think there would be fewer deaths. (This is an extreme example, of course.) And a good way to do that would be to make them legal and start regulating them, for accurate content labelling, if nothing else.

In other words, not only do I think that people should be responsible for their own actions and allowed to be responsible for them, I also think that the government should provide a way for people to be responsible within the context of allowing them to what they want.

In the context of doctors and legitimate prescriptions (as opposed to recreational drugs), I think this means that the government should continue to license medical doctors so that you have the ability to get expert advice, but they probably should not restrict those drugs, either. But, in the context of my argument, that makes you a dumbass for not seeing your doctor in ten years.

But then does that mean that the government should spend resources to help people who choose to be irresponsible anyway? Unfortunately, I'd say yes. There should be some penalty for those people after they've been helped, but we cannot allow them to rot. Perhaps these people should be required to seek the government's responsibility so as to not affect the wellbeing of others. That brings us back to moonshiners and whatever non-taxed recreational drug makers would be called. But I think that that market is likely to be small enough that it would be relatively insignificant.

The paradox in all of this is that if you want a large margin of freedom for most citizens, but restictions on those who'd screw it up for the rest of us requires a very large and potentially dictatorial government. In order to mark those people that need government restrictions, you end up marking everyone else, too. And the potential for abuse becomes higher. So the thing that makes a free yet healthy society work is the very thing that makes a tyrannical society work. It just has to be used differently.