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Re:FDA Agrees to New Trials for MDMA as Relief for PTSD Pati... by fastball on Wednesday November 30, 2016 @12:19PM (#13072577)
I feel like it's actually pretty easy to avoid any slippery slope. If you are accepting money from the government, there should be nothing you are spending money on that isn't explicitly sanctioned by the government. I as a taxpayer am not paying for your food so that you can spend the paltry sum you earn on cigarettes.

Also, I don't really the see problem with a "nanny state" in the context of people that are accepting money from the government. If you need the government to provide for you, you should be totally happy with whatever stipulations that help includes.

Re:FDA Agrees to New Trials for MDMA as Relief for PTSD Pati... by soundwave106 on Wednesday November 30, 2016 @01:39PM (#13073371)
Let's say the government proposed a rule tying Medicare type payments to your BMI (gradated until >30 BMI = no more Medicare pending graduation from a "weight loss bootcamp"). I can pretty much guarantee a huge amount of people would be totally not happy.

I could use similar harsh, if negatively over-generic, logic to justify the rule ("I'm not paying for the health costs of some fat ass who ate so many donuts in their life they're now having a heart attack on my dime!"). But such an approach will probably not solve very much anyways except make a whole lot of people angry. People would probably hold donut-eating parties in protest. :)

One other point. At present, the current state legislative trend on drug-testing "welfare" recipients is mostly limited to TANF, with occasional forays into Medicaid and SNAP. I have seen no proposals targeting SSDI / Social Security or Medicare. There's a reason I said "caste" -- right now, the context is not people in general that are accepting money from the government, but only the "wrong" people that are accepting money from the government.

Re:FDA Agrees to New Trials for MDMA as Relief for PTSD Pati... by smelterdemon on Wednesday November 30, 2016 @04:48PM (#13075029)
How do you define "accepting money from the government"? I assume you're mostly referring to SNAP, TANF, and Section 8 but where do you draw your ideological line? Anyone accessing any Federal Assistance? Does SSI count? Tax credits? Pell Grants? Should drug users be denied access to tax funded infrastructure and emergency services?
Re:FDA Agrees to New Trials for MDMA as Relief for PTSD Pati... by amitdeshwar on Sunday December 04, 2016 @03:05PM (#13101524)
Let's not forget tax-expenditures like the home mortgage interest tax deduction.