Fwd: [drugawareness] San Francisco Chronical Commentary on Drug Advertising

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drugawareness

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Mon, 22 Dec 2003 13:03:15 EST

[drugawareness] San Francisco Chronical Commentary on Drug Advertising

 

 

 

To answer Mark's question in his title, the answer is YES! Prescription drugs

are killing us at an incredible rate, currently ranking as the third leading

cause of death in this country. They are the true terrorists in this country

killing as many every week as we lost in the 9/11 attack. And we are

advertising them on TV, radio, magazines, and newspapers as if they are candy

and safer

than asprin!

 

A big thank you to the member of our group who was kind enough to send this

to us. I REALLY enjoyed it. I know that you will too.

 

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: 1-800-280-0730

Website: www.drugawareness.org

 

 

===== The Morning Fix =====

November 21, 2003 -- Bjork turns 38 today

By Mark Morford - morningfix

" Lube up, lean into the fire, and laugh "

~~ nil desperandum ~~

 

== Mark's Notes & Errata ==

Where opinion meets benign syntax abuse

 

 

 

Giant Floating Purple Pills

 

Are those creepy prescription-drug commercials on TV trying to kill you?

 

By Mark Morford

 

Cut to picture of healthy-looking yuppie guy emerging from swimming

pool and smiling.

 

Cut to picture of mother twirling her child in the park in slo-mo. Cut

to picture of woman taking deep whiffs of fresh-cut lilies at the

florist and grinning warmly as if the world was one big gob of perky

happy fluffy bunny joy. Yay. Drugs. Yay.

 

Celebrex can make you feel like you again. Celebrex is a revolutionary

new breakthrough in medicine technology. Celebrex is not for everyone.

Ask your doctor if Celebrex is right for you.

 

Side effects may include nausea diarrhea anxiety sleeplessness

headaches projectile vomiting genital warts narcolepsy halitosis death

bed wetting pained nightmares involving angry bloodsucking poodles and

the mad uncontrollable desire to smash your head into a brick wall over

and over again until you stop screaming.

 

Do not use Celebrex if you are recently deceased. Do not use Celebrex

if you are already experiencing heart palpitations or night sweats or

screaming terrified wolf howls or if you take any other medication that

begins with the letter C.

 

Pregnant or nursing mothers should not use Celebrex, unless you want

your child to become a mutant deformed pygmy three-armed libertarian

with 17 toes and the IQ of a small canned ham.

 

If you are absolutely certain nothing is wrong with you and you feel

fine and hence you do not need Celebrex, this is actually the first

troubling sign that Celebrex is exactly what you need. Contact your

doctor immediately, if not sooner.

 

If you are right now watching this TV commercial for Celebrex and have

no idea what the hell Celebrex is because we don't ever actually tell

you what the hell it is, and, hence, if you feel the pharmaceutical

industry is this freakish mega-powerful mind-control cult fully bent on

convincing as much of the human population as possible that wildly

expensive prescription meds are the answer to all your problems, this,

too, means you should take our medication, pronto.

 

And if you go so far as to dare to think that maybe, just maybe,

alternative medicine or homeopathy or just becoming much, much more

aware of your life and what you eat and how you live might, in fact,

negate the need for a great many of the drugs we manufacture, and if

you believe that we might actually invent bogus ailments and drill a

fear of them into the cultural consciousness, all in order to supply

you with the narcotics to treat them, well, have we got a nice pill for

you.

 

Sound familiar? It should. It was in 1997 that the FDA finally loosened

the rules on DTCA (direct-to-consumer advertising), finally let them

loose upon the unsuspecting and completely unprepared populace, and

thus were major pharmaceutical companies given the right to advertise

like savage and shameless maniacs on national television.

 

And they were allowed to hawk extremely expensive and often toxic drugs

designed to relieve you of various debilitating ailments, but not even

really tell you what those products actually do, or why, or how much

they cost, or anything at all except for a quick charming listing of

possible side effects, each of which seems to involve some sort of

stomach recoil and skin eruption and painful bowel shift.

 

But there was a study. There is always a study. By the Kaiser Family

Foundation. A couple years ago. It said that one in eight people who

saw a drug commercial on TV did, in fact, ask their doctor about it,

and 44 percent of those actually got themselves a prescription for that

drug.

 

Sadly enough, drug ads work. In 1997, pharmcos spent $791 million on TV

ads. Today that figure is well over $3 billion. This is why you can't

turn on the TV without seeing some inexplicable commercial for some

bizarre-sounding drug that features as its active ingredient

siflintrate oxygtoralnyzincotim but which they call Happium or maybe

Numbium. Drugs have become just another everyday consumer good, like

Campbell's soup or Windex or a new Toyota Camry.

 

A swarm of giant purple pills gently fall from the azure sky, rotating

slowly as they fall, like a rain of Skittles, like manna from the gods

of Merck. A well-drugged housewife happily bakes cookies with her

children as a bird sings on the windowsill. Happy narcotized citizens

of America go about their business, usually in slow motion, always

grinning calmly, the colors of the world oversaturated and utopian and

creepy.

 

Lipitor. Nexium. Singulair. Vioxx. Vanceril. Xenical. Zyrtec. Allegra.

Avandia. Claritin. Zoloft. Ritalin. Valtrex. Viagra. Flonase. Prinivil.

Meridia. Prilosec. Provocal. Ditropan. All on TV. All aimed straight at

consumers. All sounding like a new model from Acura.

 

Many of these drugs are, of course, beneficial to a great many people,

but every single one crosses over that modest boundary of limited need

and is heavily overmarketed and overprescribed and wickedly expensive,

its promised results misleading and even dangerous.

 

And many of these drugs are, in the long haul, quite likely more toxic

and destructive to the mind and body than pot or cocaine or ecstasy.

But, hey, as every major oil CEO and BushCo warmonger and Wal-Mart exec

knows, education and common sense are the true enemies of profit.

 

Simply put, it is in the vested interest of every pharmco in the world

to convince as many doctors as possible to prescribe their drugs,

wining and dining them and sending them elaborate gifts and buying them

hookers and booze and cars and lost weekends during ridiculously lavish

weeklong drug symposiums at the Bellagio in Vegas. Hey, just ask any

M.D. -- this happens far, far more than you think. And, by the way, you

have not seen the very embodiment of slick smarm until you've met a

professionally groomed and carefully hatched drug rep from a major

pharmaceutical corporation. Beware.

 

But now, much to their overall sinister glee, pharmcos no longer have

to market solely to doctors. And they can also pass right over your

neighborhood pharmacist, the specialist who's actually specifically

trained in this sort of thing, who actually knows more than almost any

doctor about prescription meds and what chemical does what to whom and

why.

 

After all, why try to convince the wary professionals and experts when

you can market straight to the gullible and the trusting and the easily

duped? America is sick sick sick, besotted by a hundred thousand

ailments, each one more icky and ravaging than the last. This is what

they are selling. This is the underlying message. This is why you need

their drugs.

 

And this is why television is their ultimate medium, allowing them to

convince as many consumers as possible that they must demand a

prescription for that neat-o pretty purple pill they saw on TV because,

as we all know, if it's on television, it must be good.

 

We have become a nation completely inured to seeing giant pretty pills

floating across our TV screens like they were just another can of

Cheez-Whiz. Hell, even the FDA says many of these ads are seriously

misleading, and has issued numerous warning letters to countless

pharmcos for intentionally lying to consumers about the efficacy of

their chemicals.

 

No matter. Few are demanding any drastic change to the ads, as

Bush-backed corporations have more power than they've had since the

industrial revolution, and, hence, nuanced awareness of corporate

calculation, of what is being sold to us -- from war to jingoist

ideology to the mountain of legal drugs we happily pump into our bodies

-- seems to be at an all-time low.

 

But it's OK. That sadness and bitterness and overall disgust you might

feel about all this? That sense that you are losing control, that they

have far too much power and reach and you have too few defenses and

they will soon be marketing Ritalin and kiddie Prozac straight to your

child during " Spongebob " commercial breaks? Fear not. Just relax. They

have a pill for that, too.