The New Drug Pushers

Marijuana, crack cocaine, heroin and crystal meth. According to the US government these are the original terrorists which have been the bane of our society. The government will throw all kinds of statistics out there to show how their war is being won, but they fail to highlight the stats that show the scary rise of prescription drug abuse. Humans are naturally curious creatures and some will find any way to make themselves feel good. Now, thanks to pharmaceutical companies, they can do this legally and not even have to make the trip to the inner city corner and risk arrest or worse. It's as easy as going to your doctor and complaining of an ailment and being given your "ticket" to the pharmacy to score some good dope. Better than the stuff on the street. Best of all, your insurance might actually pay for this. This is the comedy that happens every day in our country and our government sits back and allows it to occur. But when the world's most powerful drug dealer is given free rein on the public and we allow it, then it is our own fault for being so out of touch.

There no longer is such a thing as someone just being plain old crazy, or a child just being hyper. Now these are diagnosed conditions which need to be treated with drugs or extensive therapy. If a child has a lot of energy and expresses this energy the answer is, "he's got ADD" or Attention Deficit Disorder. A child naturally has a deficit of attention; this is part of being a child and quite frankly one of the perks of childhood. There's no need to pay attention, and honestly what most adults have to say doesn't deserve attention. Those few special adults out there who can catch a child's interest are the ones that we need as teachers and mentors. Psychiatrists and doctors do not interest children. Most of them are creepy people who get paid too much money and are out of touch with what that child really needs. Their answer to a child's misbehaving is medication. Parents want that magic pill to make their child "normal", when in fact most of the time the answer is staring at them every day in the mirror. Better parenting can be the best medication for a child and affect them for the rest of their lives. Instead of a child learning to deal with all the normal feelings of childhood they instead become human drones, told that they need their medication to function. While being told this they are being raised by the live in nanny who shows them murder, sex, war and sometimes even glorifies the same things we tell them not to do. This live in nanny never goes to sleep and will definitely capture the attention of a child (and most adults); she is none other than that box called television.

Thanks to TV, pharmaceutical companies can peddle their wares and invented diseases straight into our living rooms, and by the time a child is twelve years old he will have heard the words erectile dysfunction and depression several thousand times. Words like "restless legs syndrome, seasonal affective disorder (or SAD) and chronic fatigue syndrome" will be part of our culture and people will continue to think that because they are tired or sad something is wrong with them. Having "ants in your pants" now has a real medical name along with being sad, and laziness is a real medical condition.

Organizations like The Partnership for a Drug Free America continue their war against marijuana and the other "bad" drugs, but for some reason they have never spoken out against the tobacco or alcohol industry. Up until a few years ago Philip Morris and Anheuser Busch were two of the biggest donators to The Partnership, and only until this was realized by the public have they ceased to take donations from either organization. Now, the pharmaceutical industry is still one of their biggest supporters giving nearly $5.4 million in 2002 alone. This so called donation might as well be called a bribe because the drug industry doesn't want anyone coming after their products. Alcohol, tobacco and prescription drugs kill more people than "illegal" drugs do. So why doesn't The Partnership go after one of them? The simple answer is lobbyists, lots of them. Capitol Hill is full of lobbyists from all three of the legal drug industries who have lots of power and unfortunately any lobbyist for the marijuana industry (if there was such an industry) wouldn't be welcomed. America's war on drugs is not a war against drugs, but instead a war against its own people. Our leaders pass drug laws so that they can all pat each other on the back and make themselves believe that they are protecting us, when they are really only protecting their wallets. But do we really know what our country would be like if drugs were legalized? How could we know if they never have been? Would our children suddenly go on drug binges and become drug addicts overnight? We will never know the answer to this as long as the pharmaceutical industry runs our country with their big payouts to government officials, and if we continue to buy into their "pill for everything theory".

I have a close friend who for a little over two years now has been struggling with an addiction to the pain killer Percocet. The doctor who he was going to kept giving him new prescriptions for this drug for two years even though it was obvious that he was developing a problem, and everyone else around him knew this. That drug completely tore my friend apart and has probably changed him forever thanks to a doctor who thought just writing a prescription was the answer. Instances like this happen every day and this is usually how people get hooked on pain killers. Because of careless doctors and psychiatrists who know nothing of addiction and how to read the signs, people who otherwise would never touch a drug are becoming drug addicts. A lot of this is caused by pressure from pharmaceutical companies put on the medical profession to sell more of their brands, which is what drugs have become; a brand. Lobbyists for the three legal drug companies need to leave Capitol Hill and the government has to step up its oversight of the entire pharmaceutical industry. After all, we don't want our children to grow up thinking that ants in your pants or being lazy are treatable diseases.