War on drugs?The raw (and ugly) truth.

[Oldenuff]

Drugs are bad. Drugs destroy peoples’ lives. Didn’t you know that marijuana turns regular everyday people into zombie pot smokers? That’s why we have a war on drugs in America: to protect our children from potheads.

Drugs are bad. Especially marijuana. I learned this the other day when I visited an elementary school as a guest speaker. The schoolchildren were well trained in describing the dangers of drugs. On command, they would spout out any number of statements describing them.

But then a funny thing happened. I started asking how many of them were on drugs. You know, drugs their doctor prescribed. Drugs that alter brain chemistry to keep them docile, or free of pain, or to dilate their lungs so they could breathe easier.

It turned out that 60% of these schoolchildren were either on drugs at that very moment, or had been on such drugs within the last twelve months. Two-thirds of the teachers were on drugs, too. And it’s not at all a stretch to believe that 40% or more of all parents are on drugs. Mild-altering drugs like antidepressants, no less.

<<snip>>

A nation of drug addicts
Fact is, we are a nation of drug addicts. We drug ourselves, our elderly and our children on a daily basis. We do it with prescription medications, over-the-counter pills, alcohol, caffeine, nicotine… and we say it’s all fine because those drugs are legal.

But wait a minute, you say. Those legal drugs are different from marijuana. They’re FDA-approved drugs, prescribed by a doctor. They have a medical purpose.

Oh really? Ritalin has a medical purpose? What medical symptoms does Ritalin treat, then? What measurable physiological state is addressed with Ritalin? There are none, of course. Ritalin is an authority drug. It keeps children in line. It makes teachers feel less stress and parents feel less guilt. Ritalin is a mind-altering narcotic, and yet millions of children are on it today. Its purpose is not to help children, but to make life more convenient for those who manage children.

You think statin drugs have a medical purpose? Think again. In reality, they only have a profit purpose. These drugs were invented to sell pills that manage disease states in people, not that solve any real health problem. Don’t believe me? Just stop taking your statin drugs, if you dare, and watch your cholesterol skyrocket. You’ll find out you’re a slave to the drug, and no healthier than before.

>>snip<<

What’s the difference between legal and illegal drugs?
So what’s the real difference between legal drugs and illegal drugs? Some people think that only illegal drugs are habit-forming. Yet legal drugs can be just as addictive as illegal drugs. Just ask anyone who has tried to quit smoking, go off caffeine, or kick to Oxycontin habit.

So is there some other difference between illegal drugs and legal drugs? People argue that legal drugs are safe. They’re FDA-approved! And yet they fail to recognize that prescription drugs kill more Americans each year than all the crack, meth, and heroin deaths combined.

<<<snip>>>

Corporate and government profits determine the legality
Let me put this another way. You know why cigarettes are still legal? Consider this: here’s a product that admittedly kills people. It has no health benefit whatsoever. It is a threat to the public health. Yet why does it remain legal? Because states get a cut of cigarette sales thanks to the Big Tobacco settlement a few years back. Keeping cigarettes legal results in desperately-needed revenues for states… revenues that are almost never spent on anti-smoking campaigns, by the way.

It’s a classic racket: tobacco is allowed to remain legal because powerful institutions get a cut of the action. While people die from lung cancer, states get financial resuscitation by taking a cut of every sale. States are trading your health for their revenues.

Think I’m being overly cynical? Let’s take a look at gambling laws.

<<snip>>

Legal drugs generate windfall profits for those in power
Think about it: if prescription drugs were peddled by street dealers instead of doctors, and if all that revenue changed hands in a non-taxable, non-corporate structure (i.e. street cash), then you’d be seeing full-scale law enforcement action against the makers, distributors and sellers of those drugs. You’d also see endless headlines about how dangerous they were: “Street painkillers kill twelve in South Miami!”

The sad truth of the matter, though, is that those very same painkilling drugs killed at least twelve people in South Miami this very day.

<<snip>>

Non-patentable drugs are usually outlawed
That’s why medical marijuana is illegal: because government doesn’t control its distribution, nor does government receive a financial cut. You can bet your life that if Big Pharma owned the patents on medical marijuana and could set monopolistic prices on it, pot would be perfectly legal to own and smoke. That is, as long as you got it from a pharmacy where prices and distribution could be controlled.

Control is the key here. You think the FDA is discrediting drugs from Canada in order to protect your health? Get real. The FDA is simply protecting the monopoly drug market in this country.


There is more...Oh yes indeed...if you are interested then simply proceed:


http://farmwars.info/?p=2149

[asdjrocky]

1. It's all about money and it always has been.

I'm a long time Ca grower and we laugh when they try to scare us into believing Mexican drug cartels are bringing Mexican grass into Ca. No one I know has smoked anything from Mexico since 1977.

But this is a school system that taught kids for years that Columbus was a hero, expect a big heaping pile of propaganda with any truth in American schools.

[mopinko]

2. hogwash

[Warpy]

3. Christ, what a stupid article!

Ritalin is a godsend for people who need it. Yes, it is probably overprescribed, but that's because parents don't bother to get their kids properly evaluated by a neurologist or pediatric psychiatrist who specializes in ADD. It's a real problem. It's a real diagnosis.

Likewise, the statin drugs. Yes, they're overprescribed, but for people with known coronary artery disease, they can manage that disease. For people with genetically programmed high cholesterol, they can prolong healthy life for decades. Again, we don't know how to change a person's genetics or magically clean out all their arteries. We do have drugs to keep them from dying so quickly from these conditions.

Racial prejudice has more with keeping certain drugs illegal than greed for profits does. Mexicans smoke pot and that makes them bad workers! Black people shoot heroin and that makes them bad workers! No word on yuppies and powder cocaine, but ghetto people smoke crack and that makes them bad workers! No word on alcohol and the martini set, either, if you'll notice. It's pure prejudice, class prejudice tied to race.

Drug companies are profiteering but their shit does work to help us live longer and healthier lives. Should they be prevented from profiteering? Hell yes. Should we dismiss useful treatments for often deadly disease because somebody's making a buck somewhere? Hell no.

When the author of this article gets sick enough, he'll be the first one to whine for drugs, I can see it coming.

Until then, I suppose we'll have to endure more of this garbage from him and everybody else who doesn't know what the fuck they're talking about.

[arikara]

5. Do Cholesterol Drugs Do Any Good?

Research suggests that, except among high-risk heart patients, the benefits of statins such as Lipitor are overstated

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_04/b4068052092994.htm


snip

Several recent scientific papers peg the NNT for statins at 250 and up for lower-risk patients, even if they take it for five years or more. "What if you put 250 people in a room and told them they would each pay $1,000 a year for a drug they would have to take every day, that many would get diarrhea and muscle pain, and that 249 would have no benefit?

snip

[Warpy]

6. "Many?" The reactions are actually pretty small

as a percentage of people who have taken the drugs.

But yes, they are helping people with high cholesterol live longer. I have too many friends, acquaintances and former patients with normal fasting cholesterol >300 and whose parents died in their 40s and 50s and who are alive and well into their 60s and 70s with none of the health problems associated with high cholesterol.

So yeah, I'd say they work quite well, thank you very much.

I know you're heavily invested in antimedical crap, but you really don't know what you're talking about any more than the author of the OP does.

[arikara]

12. I could say the same to you but

I wouldn't be so rude. Instead I'll just say bye bye, life is too short to waste time arguing with people who already know everything they want to know.

[The Doctor.]

9. Indeed.

There are true medical needs for most every drug. ADD is chronically over-diagnosed in children, yes. I can tell you that there are plenty of 'incentives' physicians, especially psychiatrists, receive from pharmaceutical companies to over-prescribe.

[RumJungle]

10. Damn right.

[mopinko]

11. and those stupid asses addicted to breathing.

cuz we all know that only the lazy need help from drugs to breathe.
really, this- you have to take it forever => you are addicted- shit is just :puke: inducing nonsense.

[nadinbrzezinski]

4. And in the real world where I live

I know that Statins have a REAL medical effect.

By the way, so does the active component of Marijuana, great for things like oh Cancer, (and the effects of radiation therapy) and a few other maladies.

Oh and you think illegal drugs aren't enriching a few individuals? Keep dreaming.

[bertman]

7. BIG REC. Regarding Ritalin, I have a friend who is a highly-respected pediatrician who

specializes in kids who are ADD, ADHD, etc. He prescribes Ritalin to MANY of his young patients. One day I asked him about the explosion of ADD, ADHD diagnoses among kids. I wanted to know why there were so many kids who had to be on drugs just to be in school. His answer: because their parents don't know how to deal with them. They don't have the parenting skills or don't want to learn them. So, he prescribes the drugs so the kids are controllable. Imagine my surprise! When I expressed astonishment, he basically said, it's my job to help the kids and the parents to live their lives without having to deal with a lot of drama and stress. The drugs take care of that.


There is an excellent book that was written by an Economics Professor Emeritus at UNC Chapel Hill that explains a lot of the drug hysteria and the reasons for the "war on drugs". It's called "DRUGS, America's Holy War" by Arthur Benavie. He says that THE ONLY PEOPLE who still support the war on drugs are the ones who benefit materially from it--DEA, police, (although many of them think it's a lost cause), manufacturers of police gear, pharmaceutical corporations--and the religious right who see it as a moralilty/sin issue. According to him, every person who has done any objective research on the subject of drug use in America thinks our policy is insane, a huge drain on our economy, and contributes to the violence surrounding the drug culture.

Interesting post, Oldenuff.


edit for clarity.

[Goldstein1984]

8. I think the real world is a little more complicated...

Our son was sent home from kindergarten with a diagnosis of ADHD by his teacher and a note from the principal demanding a prescription for Ritalin before he would be allowed to return. I took him to a pediatrician, and when the doctor walked into the exam room and saw my son quietly sitting at a table coloring a picture, he laughed and said, "We're getting a lot of these lately. The school district must have had a seminar or something." Ritalin, like any other drug, is good when properly prescribed for a condition that has been properly diagnosed. But it IS sometimes used as a control drug.

Statins also have an interesting history. Atherosclerosis and cholesterol are correlated, but the cause-and-effect is yet to be established. There are many physicians, mine among them, who believe that it is inflammation that triggers atherosclerosis, and that it's the anti-inflammatory effect of statins, which can be obtained at one tenth the dose, that reduces atherosclerosis. My aunt lived to 91 with a cholesterol level of 300 and no atherosclerosis. My father had his first heart attack at 51, resulting in a sextuple bypass; another sextuple bypass followed when he was 58; an angioplasty with stent implants a few years after that. I'm 53, and I just had a "cardiac score" done (a 41-slice cat scan of my heart), which found zero plaque deposits. My cholesterol is 280, so I probably have the same genes as my aunt. I was treated for a short time with a variety of statin drugs, but I experienced severe side effects, so now I'm on niacin because, what the heck, it's cheap and it's just water-soluble vitamin B3.

In many cases, drugs are rushed to market with a likewise rushed approval by the FDA. The FDA also rushed the approval of aspartame because they needed an artificial sweetener to replace saccharine, which was later re-approved. By the way, cyclamate sweeteners were banned in the U.S. while saccharine was banned in Canada. Evidently, saccharine causes cancer in Canada, but cyclamates cause cancer in the U.S. Anybody who experiences the severe headaches caused by aspartame can consider themselves test subjects in a long-term clinical trial.

Considering the genetic variability among humans, the profit motive among the various elements of the medical industry, and the social control aspects to how drugs and administered, everyone posting on in this thread is probably correct to some degree.

And yes, just follow the $$$$