That's absolutely not true. Antibiotics require a prescription and aren't addictive.

OTC medications are only approved if the drug and condition are mild enough that a doctor doesn't need to be involved.

And it gets a little bit silly -- 200mg ibuprofen are OTC, 400mg require a prescription.

That's largely because there's the potential to abuse the drugs as well. Giving people painkillers is good, giving them at a strength that makes it easy for someone to overdose from one bottle, less good. For what it's worth, you can easily get 400 or 500mg ibuprofen over the counter in the UK, but it will probably involve interacting with a pharmacist who'll probably refuse to sell them to you if they suspect you're going to abuse them.

With antibiotics there's a pretty good reason for them to prescription only, namely that drug resistant strains of illnesses are becoming a serious problem and it's only made worse by the over use of antibiotics. Plus, you likely don't know what the appropriate antibiotics will be for what ever problem you're trying to treat are.

Pardon my ignorance... who abuses ibuprofen and why?

Many people pop OTC drugs like candy. Ibuprofen is often over-used by people with chronic back pain or other inflammatory issues. They aren't addicts -- just people trying to get through the day.

The problem is, it is a rough drug on your kidneys and has potential cardiac side effects.

Someone who has some sort of pain but overdoses frequently would count I guess? At some point you should discuss your pain with a Doctor, instead of increasing the dose yourself.

I also meant abuse as a slightly nicer phrasing of "tries to deliberately overdose".

Flying Spaghetti Monster. The point is that my obsession with vitamins is irrational and I am aware of that fact.

Nope, all sorts of things that are not addictive are controlled by the FDA [insert long rant here]

The great thing about FSM is they had promo about irrational correlation that showed that the number of pirates(naval) was inversely proportional to global temperatures, just before the outbreak of hijackings off Somalia.

Edit:

Church leaders responded in 2008

Henderson interpreted the growing pirate activities at the Gulf of Aden as additional support, pointing out that Somalia has "the highest number of pirates and the lowest carbon emissions of any country."

Plenty of prescription drugs are not addictive, and plenty of OTC drugs are addictive. Your impression is incorrect.

Heh. I need a prescription to buy Vitamin K because it is in "prescription-strength" doses. Lovely self-circular logic.

Ketamine?

There is an actual vitamin K.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_K