Lots of people overreact to this topic, but it's a valid one. Valium is a perfectly legitimate medicine to put in your travel kit, and most of the planet allows its sale as either over-the-counter or with a pharmacist's consultation. Codeine is also a widely-available medicine in most places and has perfectly legit uses.
Yes, both can be abused. So can the rum. So can the much worse drugs that you can often buy on many streetcorners.
I generally carry at least a few pills in my travel kit that probably are illegal some times (they certainly are illegal as soon as I get home). I tend to cross multiple borders in each trip, and the laws are often a bit different in each country. But anyone who has ever needed ciproflaxin or lorazepam or codeine while traveling (all commonly used for intestinal problems) knows that it is pure agony to try to find your way to a town, find a doctor, bridge the language barrier and get through the line at the pharmacy all while not having a toilet available. Counting vitamins and aspirin and Benadryl, I have about 15 meds in my travel kit along with a short booklet on their use. It has come in handy more times than I can count.
In my experience it tends to mostly be an issue with my fellow USA citizens. Almost nothing in our country is legal without a physician and a pharmacist both signing off on it, so we tend to think of most medicines as inherently something scary (plus, a heck of a lot of us can't afford medical care, but that's a totally different issue).
