I tried the pharmacy counter approach once at several pharmacies, they wouldn't do anything without a prescription from a doctor. In the U.S., asthma inhalers a

I tried the pharmacy counter approach once at several pharmacies, they wouldn't do anything without a prescription from a doctor. In the U.S., asthma inhalers are used by a few silly teenagers to get "high" (for those without asthma: effective rescue inhalers are corticosteroids that as a side effect also accelerate your heart rate). The reaction in the U.S. of course has been to make the rescue inhalers difficult to get for the ~25 million people in the country with the condition. I would want to see some estimates on how many people are actually abusing online pharmacies to harm themselves or others vs. people using them legitimately to get medication that's otherwise unavailable or too expensive locally. I know at least a couple of women that use them for birth control, because there's a product available that way that isn't available in the U.S., that has less of a hormonal impact than the usual stuff. (I don't know the name of the product or anything else about it, though.) As far as abuse goes, I suspect that abuse of ADHD drugs might be somewhat common, and I'd bet there are at least a few on HN doing that (because it's been discussed before), and honestly I find it difficult to care at all about that kind of abuse. I don't think that further removing access to affordable medication is the right way to get people to see a doctor.