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The
federal government spends nearly $1 billion a month to
fight the war on drugs. But while we focus on eradicating
illicit drugs, we ignore the worsening problem of
overmedication.
National
sales figures indicate that from 1998 to 2002, sales of
anti-depressants increased 73% to more than $12 billion, while
analeptics, drugs like Ritalin and Adderall that stimulate the
central nervous system, increased 167%, according to IMS
Health, a pharmaceutical information and consulting company.
Even more distressing, physicians wrote more than 1 million
prescriptions for Strattera, a nonstimulant treatment for
attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, in its first six
months on the market.
But
something is very wrong here. The dramatic increase in the
sale of these pharmaceuticals suggest that Americans are well
on the way to becoming not only depressed, anxiety-ridden and
incapable of the meaningful focus necessary to understand the
world in which we live, but also on our way to becoming a
drug-dependent nation.
Doping
up kids
/
No
one would deny that ADHD, depression and anxiety disorders
afflict millions of Americans. But to what degree? Through a
combination of pharmaceutical companies' increased marketing,
quick diagnoses from physicians and a lack of proper referrals
from doctors, we are simply inundating huge numbers of people
with unprecedented amounts of medication.
The
issue is all the more sensitive and heartrending when it comes
to our children. According to the Archives of Pediatric and
Adolescent Medicine, a study of 900,000 youths showed that the
number of children taking psychiatric drugs more than doubled
in one group and tripled in the two others for the decade
ending 1996.
"Any
time a child reads a little more slowly, we're talking
learning disability and administering Ritalin, or any time a
kid acts up a bit, instead of giving him detention, we're
drugging him," says Dr. Arthur Caplan, chairman of the
medical ethics department at the University of Pennsylvania
School of Medicine. He adds, "These are definitely
problems, in that it's expensive, it may not address the cause
of the problem and I've never met a drug yet, including
aspirin, that didn't have some side effects."
In
other words, some pharmaceuticals create greater problems than
they treat. In June, British drug officials, later endorsed by
the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, warned physicians and
consumers that GlaxoSmithKline's anti-depressant Paxil carries
a substantial risk of prompting teenagers and children to
consider suicide. Two months later, Wyeth warned doctors of
the same risks in its Effexor. U.S. sales of both drugs
totaled nearly $4 billion last year.
The
driving force behind the surge is aggressive
direct-to-consumer advertising, Caplan says. Following the
relaxation of a 30-year drug marketing agreement in 1997,
pharmaceutical companies have tripled their annual advertising
to consumers, resulting in a 37% increase in sales of
prescription stimulants for children. Also, roughly one-third
of all adults have asked their doctor about a drug they saw
advertised, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
And
those doctors are quick to dole out prescriptions. According
to the American Psychiatric Association, primary care
physicians now write upward of 60% of anti-depressant
prescriptions. Says Caplan, "I think [doctors are] just
overwhelmed now with too much marketing, and it drives them
toward too much prescribing."
Uniquely
American /
In
fact, American consumers, mostly children, account for more
than 90% of global consumption of such stimulants. "If we
have four or five times the learning disability or depression
or other neurotic illnesses that the Europeans do,"
Caplan says, "then either we got a really bad gene pool
through immigration or we're overmedicating."
In
either case, a crisis looms. The pharmaceutical companies, the
FDA and Congress must confront this issue now, and the
physicians' credo is an appropriate starting point: First, do
no harm. That credo simply must take precedence over profit
motives, casual prescriptions and expedient parenting.
REFERENCE
Article
by Lou Dobbs - Originally published in the September 28,
2003 issue of the New York Daily News
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