Many nonprescription drugs can cause serious side effects, particularly when taken in conjunction with other drugs or in large quantities. If these potentially harmful nonprescription drugs were sold only by prescription, then a doctor or pharmacist would be able to explain the possible side effects of the drug and would also be able to monitor the quantity of the drug purchased, thereby decreasing the change that a person would take too much of the drug. Therefore, any drug with potentially serious side effects should be sold only by prescriptionDiscuss how well-reasoned you find this argument.
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The author argued that if potentially harmful non-prescription drugs were only sold by prescription, doctors or pharmacists would be able to explain the possible side effects of the drug and the quantity purchased, thus reducing the chance that a patient would overdose that drug sold. This argument to me, however, is implied with several unsolicited assumptions.
Firstly, the author examined only on the circumstances where nonprescription drugs are consumed in high volume or in conjunction with other drugs. On this basis, it is also possible that if nonprescription drugs are consumed in normal quantities or unmixed with other drugs, the patient will not face any health hazards or side effects.
Secondly, by only explaining the side effects of the drugs and monitoring the quantity of the drug purchased would not prevent the patients from overdosing the drugs. Patients urgently in need of the drug would probably purchased multiples from other pharmacies and disregard the doctor's or pharmacist's advice. Adequate tracking of patient's purchases of the same drug across pharmacies will then be able for doctors to monitor the patient history.
Thirdly, patients would have been taking the same drug prescribed by family doctor over the years and the use of the drug could possibly be a supplement rather than remedy to illness. For convenience purpose, these drugs are available over-the-counter with no prescriptions. And so, it is unjustifiable for patients to visit the doctors to obtain the same drug regularly.
In short, the author failed to consider scenarios where drugs are better sold with no presciption. It requires more in-depth research on the consumer behaviour of these drugs to postulate such argument.
-- Completed in 27 mins, 272 words
I was afraid I would run out of time. Then again, I like to write in short sentences due to limited vocabulary.