Fwd: [drugawareness] NY Daily News - We need a war vs. legal drugs

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drugawareness

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Mon, 29 Sep 2003 02:14:31 EDT

[drugawareness] NY Daily News - We need a war vs. legal drugs

The New York Daily News carried an excellent article today entitled " We need

a war vs. legal drugs " . That is the war the International Coalition For Drug

Awareness has been fighting for some time now. That is our mission and purpose,

to educate an unsuspecting public about dangerous prescription medications.

The FDA seems to have dropped the ball considering how many medications have

been pulled from the market in the last decade or so leaving in the wake many

dead and dying patients.

 

The article below is very similar in many ways to my article printed in the

Salt Lake Tribune and Desert News several years ago (97 or 98) entitled " The

Next Generation of Medical Guinea Pigs - Our Prozac, Zoloft, and Paxil Babies " .

I wish you could see the art work that went with the article. It was very well

done with a baby drinking a big bottle full of Prozac. You can find that

article posted on our website just under the picture of my book on these drugs.

The button reads " SSRI Babies " .

 

Some of the highlights of the article below are:

 

" 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. "

 

Dr. Caplan makes a clear-cut arguement here that we are overmedicating our

children. And next comes the warning once again on the dangers of these

antidepressants being given to children - a warning that is not reaching many

unsuspecting parents.

 

" 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. "

 

Dr. Ann Blake Tracy,

Executive Director, International Coalition For Drug Awareness

& author of Prozac: Panacea or Pandora? - Our Serotonin Nightmare

& tape on safe withdrawal " Help! I Can't Get Off My Antidepressant! "

 

Order Number: 800-280-0730

Website: www.drugawareness.org

 

 

http://www.nydailynews.com/business/story/121404p-109207c.html

 

 

We need a war vs. legal drugs

 

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.

 

Originally published on September 28, 2003

 

 

 

 

 

 

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