"What I struggle with, however, is the notion of medical practitioners being involved in the distribution process.

Obviously I exclude from these considerations situations in which these drugs are being used in a genuinely medical context.  There are various medical procedures, for instance, in which an anxiolytic can make things a great deal easier for everybody, and obviously this is, and should be, a matter for the physician to decide in consultation with the patient.

But situations which do not involve a genuine medical issue are, in my view, more problematic.  My primary concern is that regardless of what the physician says, the fact that the drug is being prescribed by a medical practitioner will inevitably communicate the notion that somehow it is a medicine, and that the problem is medical in nature.  I can also readily imagine that psychiatrists would – again inevitably – begin to truncate the caveats, and in some cases might dispense with them altogether."