That argument might have had some validity in prior times. Now, way too many people are dying from multi-drug resistant strains of TB, staph, etc. Just spending a few minutes with Wikipedia on those two bugs, I'd guess we're close to pushing 100K people dying a year due to them.
And from prior reading it's a lot worse in places where they can be obtained without a prescription.
Let me start with an extreme example: You can't go around setting up landmines. We prevent people from doing something today because hypothetical bad things might happen. I think that the implication of your argument is that for antibiotics, the $HYPOTHETICAL_BAD_THING is less bad and less likely than the extreme example of landmines, but I think you need to make that point. How much danger can you put other people in in the future before it becomes unacceptable?
You do realize that in many, many countries, you can buy antibiotics over the counter, right? Nearby countries like Mexico, and far away countries like India (with a huge population)? And that people are buying them and using them constantly?
Sure, there's the risk of antibiotic resistant bacteria developing, but the U.S. isn't going to stop that from happening no matter how difficult they make it for people to buy and use the drugs they need.
I'm starting to lose patience with people trying to take away the right of other people to control their own body.
And it's not just antibiotics. Things like prescription drugs being essentially purposefully laced with poison (acetaminophen) to prevent people from "abusing" them and other drugs like cannabis being illegal is utterly ridiculous.
If we don't own our own bodies, what do we get to own?
"But they're doing it!" is not an argument as to why we should contribute to the problem.
> I'm starting to lose patience with people trying to take away the right of other people to control their own body.
Except this "right" for people to control their body is also being taken away by the people making the tools we have to control our bodies useless.
The idea that you have in general the right to do whatever you want to yourself also comes with the present reality is that the rest of us have to pay up when you do something stupid.
An aside: I reject your premises entirely in the first place. There is no such thing as a "right." There are no rights given by God, nature did not instill you with any such rights, they are not inscribed on your soul. They are convenient legal fictions invented for contemporary norms that probably, in general and in the long-term, lead to happier societies. And if people putting whatever they want into their bodies causes or will cause immense suffering and unhappiness for other people in the future (the reduced effectiveness of antibiotics), then it is ridiculous and perhaps even selfishly evil to maintain even the pretense of your legal fiction.
I don't get this mindset. If you don't like unregulated prescription drugs, don't buy them. OTOH, if I'm willing to gamble with my health by taking drugs I buy online...well, its my body, I can put whatever I want into it.
Now, somebody bring up antibiotic resistant bacteria as the BigGov argument. Sorry, but that doesn't hold water with me. I don't find it moral to prevent somebody from doing something today, because $HYPOTHETICAL_BAD_THING might happen tomorrow.