The availability of prescriptions medications in Vietnam

I hear about the woes of people overseas back in my home country and even in other neighboring countries about how they can't get this or that prescription drug or even how they wish that the doctor would prescribe a bunch of powerful painkillers but they don't do so.

Many of these people are probably trying to get scrips for bad reasons like wanting to get extra trashed on a night out for drinking. I"m sure there are plenty of people like that in the world. I am not one of those people but the other day in my local pharmacy opened my eyes to how dangerous the pharmacies here in Vietnam could potentially be.

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I didn't take a picture at my local pharmacy because I don't want to kick up a fuss or anything but there was a list, a menu of sorts, that was at the front counter laminated only in English and among the drugs they had on that list were, Ambien (a powerful sedative), Tramadol (painkiller-opiate based), prococet (I don't really know what that is, but I know it is highly addictive, Adderol (that's likely spelled wrong), Vicodin (a powerful opiate oriented pain killer normally reserved for post surgical pain.)

There were many others such as Xanax and stuff like that but I have to say, I don't like that this is being marketed in the tourist part of town clearly for people to get get trashed. This is not for anyone looking to fill a genuine prescription because if it was, they wouldn't need to have all the common addictive "kiddie drugs" all conveniently listed in a laminated list that can quickly be hidden if anyone not a foreigner or if a police officer comes in.

I have at one point in time gotten my hands on a strip of Ambien, just to put myself to sleep on airplanes and while I would imagine it varies from person-to-person, that tablet basically put me in a coma for 8 hours. I am sure I was drooling on the people around me and perhaps snoring louder than the engines. It, for me, was basically a "take one of these, wait an hour, then you WILL go to sleep" sort of situation.

I don't necessarily struggle to sleep on flights but I certainly didn't on that one. I feel like this is all fine if you are using it responsibly but it kind of opened my eyes to why there aught to be some sort of restrictions on what you can and cannot get from the pharmacy just because you feel like it.

Didn't multiple celebrities or rock stars die from a Xanax addiction? Aren't opiates well known to be extremely addictive? How are we getting away with this?

I like freedom, but I also know that in places like SE Asia that a lot of, excuse my crude choice of words, but a lot of fuckups head over this way to abuse drugs and here we are advertising it directly in the chemist/pharmacist for would be junkies to order at their hearts content.

I do know a girl that was visiting there from Thailand where there are pretty strict controls on prescription drugs and out of curiosity she asked if she could order 200 Valium tablets. This would get you put on a list in most places in the world just for trying but nah, not here. Apparently they just sold her enough Valium to kill her and everyone else on her aisle of the plane for her trip back to Thailand.

I think there is probably a happy middle ground here. I don't like totally limiting everyone's access but too much access is going to make problems as well. I reckon we'll be hearing about some OD's in the local news before too long.