The drug war paranoia makes it necessary. So does the bureaucratic system that allows only people with an official diagnosis to obtain any kind of medication, even mood modifiers that are inherently subtle and personal.

Well, it doesn't prohibit all kinds of medication. Lots of people who are using adderall (also known as amphetamines, benzedrine, or dexedrine -- a popular self-administered medicine until the 1970s) and the like would be using truly dangerous tobacco and liquor if amphetamines were not available.

It's not about insurance. The pills themselves are very cheap to make and most formulations are not under patent.

As long as we need to put people in jail for using these substances, we're going to need a way to mark whose use is legitimate and whose isn't. Measuring who has health insurance and a good stable relationship with a doctor is a good way to tell whom to imprison and whom not to.

Methamphetamine incidentally is different from adderall only by a single methyl moiety and has almost indistinguishable clinical effect in matched doses, though meth has longer lasting side effects due to the hydrophobic methyl group allowing the medicine to persist longer in fatty tissues.