Pubdate: Mon, 22 Oct 2012
Source: Orion, The (California State Chico, CA Edu)
Copyright: 2012 The Orion
Contact:  http://www.orion-online.net/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2816
Author: Kevin Crittenden

LEGAL DRUGS MAKE FOR DEADLY ADDICTIONS

Nobody chooses to become a drug addict.

People succumb to dependency on prescription drugs for different
reasons. It might start with a curiosity or a legitimate medical need.
But eventually, the user may need the substance just to feel normal.

Powerful pain medications used to be reserved for cancer patients and
patients with terminal conditions. Over the past decade, many doctors
have embraced opioids as effective, lucrative means of pain management.

Most people are unaware that prescription drugs like OxyContin are
closely related to heroin. They belong to the same narcotics family,
and they are both opiates. The main difference is that one is made in
a laboratory, and the other is grown, processed and smuggled into the
country from global drug farmers who make a convenient scapegoat for
the war on drugs.

When people think of the war on drugs, they might think of Bolivian
peasants growing cocaine on a rugged mountain terrain, images of
soldiers guarding Afghan poppy fields or bricks of Mexican bud.

Despite mainstream media propaganda that places the blame for the
widespread availability of drugs squarely on the shoulders of
foreigners, the truth hits much closer to home.

Some of the deadliest drugs are made in the land of apple pie and
Budweiser.

America is one of the world's leading producers of pharmaceuticals,
and in 2008, 20,044 people died from overdosing on prescription drugs,
according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

The pharmaceutical industry is big business. Global spending on
pharmaceuticals exceeded $956 billion in 2011, according to the IMS
Institute for Healthcare Informatics.

Such an unthinkable sum is made possible by legislative loopholes, an
uninformed but trusting public and a gridlocked political system.

And although opioids are potentially fatal, other drug types are also
popular, especially among college students. Amphetamines like Ritalin
and Adderall are handed out during midterm and finals weeks like
Skittles on a grade-school playground.

These are drugs, folks. That little pill may look more benign than a
dime bag of crystal methamphetamine, but the difference is miniscule.

What we really have in this country is a health management system.
Doctors treat symptoms, not causes. When a fat, depressed, diabetic
with erectile dysfunction goes to the doctor, he may very well leave
with enough prescriptions to fill a medicine cabinet and no motivation
to change the behaviors that created his health problems.

Even well-intentioned doctors, who do their best to treat patients
with genuine professional care, can be lied to and squeezed for
illicit prescriptions. Addicts can also go across state lines and fill
prescriptions with no federal monitoring system in place to stop them.

Part of the problem is that the government has no credibility in the
eyes of most citizens. A government that has made marijuana illegal,
while allowing for the production of synthetic heroin and meth, does
not have a particularly accurate barometer for what is safe.

Western medicine's resounding mantra can be succinctly reduced to,
"There's a pill for that." I doubt most doctors prescribe addiction on
purpose. Too bad they don't make a pill for that.
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