Are prescription drugs destroying America? Why is the government protecting the legal drug dealers? Is anybody listening? Does anybody care?

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America's Collective National Trip - Legal Prescription Drugs

Is Prince the latest victom?

Perhaps the fallout of the Germanwings A320 airplane crash in France caused by a depressed and psychotic co-pilot on prescription drugs should be a wake up call to America.  You are not safe in society now that 70% of Americans are on prescription drugs.

Over the years, I have closely followed the relationship between "isolated" cases of extreme violence and prescription drugs, and more often than not, the perpetrator of the crime was on some type of prescription drug, just like the pilot who killed 150 people.

From mass murders in schools to suicide airplane crashes, the world has gone crazy and we need to know the role prescription drugs are playing in this nightmare.

It was forty-five years ago when then Vice President Spiro Agnew declared that America was on a collective national trip because of the increasing abuse of prescription drugs along with the use of illegal drugs.

Jun 17, 1971

Nixon Begins War on Drugs

President Richard Nixon coins the phrase, "War on Drugs," promising in a major speech to defeat "public enemy number one in the United States.  If we cannot destroy the drug menace, then it will destroy us."

That was forty-four years ago that America launched a war on drugs, both illegal drugs, and the pre-occupation of Americans with legal prescription drugs.

Drug statistics, conveniently, it may seem, run about five years behind in reporting.

     

Prescription drug use

Percent of persons using at least one prescription drug in the past 30 days: 48.5% (2007-2010)

Percent of persons using three or more prescription drugs in the past 30 days: 21.7% (2007-2010)

Percent of persons using five or more prescription drugs in the past 30 days: 10.6% (2007-2010)

Source: Health, United States, 2013, table 92[PDF - 9.8 MB](http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus13.pdf#092)

Physician office visits

Number of drugs ordered or provided: 2.6 billion

Percent of visits involving drug therapy: 75.1%

Most frequently prescribed therapeutic classes:

Analgesics

Antihyperlipidemic agents

Antidepressants

Source: National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey: 2010 Summary Tables, tables 22, 23, 24[PDF - 382 KB](http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/ahcd/namcs_summary/2010_namcs_web_tables.pdf)

Hospital outpatient department visits

Number of drugs ordered or provided: 285.1 million

Percent of visits involving drug therapy: 74.4%

Most frequently prescribed therapeutic classes

Analgesics

Antidiabetic agents

Antihyperlipidemic agents

Source: National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey: 2010 Outpatient Department Summary Tables, tables 18, 19, 20[PDF - 330 KB](http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/ahcd/nhamcs_outpatient/2010_opd_web_tables.pdf)

Hospital emergency department visits

Number of drugs ordered or provided: 286.2 million

Percent of visits involving drug therapy: 80.3%

Most frequently prescribed therapeutic classes

analgesics

Antiemetic or antivertigo agents

Minerals and electrolytes

Source: National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey: 2011 Emergency Department Summary Tables. Tables 20, 21, 22[PDF - 1

The report -- titled "Health, United States 2013" -- found the percentage of Americans taking prescription drugs has increased dramatically.  During the most recent period, from 2007 to 2010, about 48% of people said they were taking prescription medication, compared with 39% in 1988 to 1994.

Prescription drug use increased with age. About one in four children took one or more prescription drugs in the past month, compared to nine in 10 adults 65 and older, according to the study.

"This is really not earth-shattering news. There's an increasing number of people with chronic illnesses, and the primary management tool available for dealing with chronic illness is medication," said William Lang, vice president of policy and advocacy for the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy.

One in 10 Americans said he or she had taken five or more prescription drugs in the previous month. That raises concerns about potential drug interactions, said Anne Burns, senior vice president for professional affairs at the American Pharmacists Association.

"We know that the number of adverse drug events a patient is likely to experience increases as the number of medications they are taking increases," Burns said. "You've got everything from potential interactions between medications to timing issues taking a variety of medications throughout the day."

People who took five or more drugs in the past month tended to be older. Only 10.8 percent of people taking that many drugs were between 18 and 44, while 41.7 percent were between 45 and 64 and 47.5 percent were 65 and older.

Drugs to manage cholesterol, high blood pressure, heart disease and kidney disease are the most widely used medications among adults, the CDC report found.

In particular, the use of cholesterol-lowering drugs among people 18 to 64 has increased more than six-fold since 1988-1994, due in part to the increased use of statins.  Also, nearly 18 percent of adults 18 to 64 took at least one cardiovascular drug during the past month.

The CDC report noted some headway in efforts to combat the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Prescriptions of antibiotics for cold symptoms during routine medical visits declined 39 percent between 1995-1996 and 2009-2010.

But the report also found a tripling of overdose deaths due to prescription narcotics. Painkillers taken among people 15 and older caused 6.6 deaths for every 100,000 people in 2009-2010, compared with 1.9 deaths per 100,000 in 1999-2000.

There has been a fourfold increase in antidepressant use among adults, but Holmes said that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Seeking help for a mental health disorder isn't as stigmatized as it once was, she noted. In addition, companies have introduced more effective antidepressants, and researchers have found that antidepressants also can be used to treat panic and anxiety disorders.

"If antidepressants enable people to function fully in their social roles, that's a good thing," Holmes said.

All that said, prescription drug use has spiraled out of control since 2010 as health officials now say antibiotics, antidepressants, and opioids are used by seven out of ten people.  

Drug overdose death rates have never been higher. In the United States alone, 100 people die from drug overdoses every day, most of them caused by prescription drugs. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has officially declared prescription drug abuse in the US an epidemic.

Antibiotics -

Number one on the list of prescribed drugs, we continue to be subject to levels of antibiotics far in excess of our needs, and the shift of antibiotics to animal feed from human treatment assures our contamination for years to come, even if we stop taking antibiotics for a toothache, and for many other reasons.

It is also important to note that antibiotics are frequently used in settings where they will not provide any benefits. An example of this sort of inappropriate use of antibiotics is for viral infections, such as the common cold. In fact, there is a tendency for patients to believe that if they are ill with an "infection", an antibiotic is the solution. Well, it's not always.

As recently reported in the news, For The Love Of Pork: Antibiotic Use On Farms Skyrockets Worldwide.

   

The love of meat is exploding in Asia, and with it, comes antibiotic consumption by chickens (top) and pigs (bottom). Green represents low levels of drug used; yellow and orange are medium levels; and red and magenta are high levels.

Pig farmers around the world, on average, use nearly four times as much antibiotics as cattle ranchers do, per pound of meat. Poultry farmers fall somewhere between the two.

That's one of the conclusions of a study published Thursday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It's the first look at the amount of antibiotics used on farms around the world — and how fast consumption is growing.

The numbers reported are eye-opening.  In 2010, the world used about 63,000 tons of antibiotics each year to raise cows, chickens and pigs, the study estimated. That's roughly twice as much as the antibiotics prescribed by doctors globally to fight infections in people.

"We have huge amounts of antibiotic use in the animal sector around the world, and it's set to take off in a major way in the next two decades," says the study's senior author, Ramanan Laxminarayan, who directs the Center for Disease Dynamics Economics & Policy in Washington, D.C.

In all cases, since we know the over-use of antibiotics increases drug resistance in cells in our bodies, which make us susceptible to many new mutant, drug-resistant bacteria and virus's such as staff infections and others.  It may also be a contribution factor to increases in well known diseases like cancer.

Antidepressants - Feel Good Medicine

Antidepressants Aren't Taken By The Depressed; Majority Of Users Have No Disorder

Depression’s increase in the U.S. has been persisting for years, and it’s going on decades. And while the increase in antidepressant use has followed a predictably similar path, not all cases can be explained by the parallel rise in disease. Many people, in fact, take antidepressants regardless of a diagnosis.

A new study published in The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry reports some 69 percent of people taking selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), the primary type of antidepressants, have never suffered from major depressive disorder (MDD). Perhaps worse, 38 percent have never in their lifetime met the criteria for MDD, obsessive compulsive disorder, panic disorder, social phobia, or generalized anxiety disorder, yet still take the pills that accompany them.

In a society that is increasingly self-medicating itself, capsules, tablets, and pills are turning from last resorts to easily obtained quick fixes. Between 1988 and 2008, antidepressant use increased nearly 400 percent. Today, 11 percent of the American population takes a regular antidepressant, which, by the latest study’s measure, may be a severe inflation of what’s actually necessary.

Opioids - Pain Killers

Although many types of prescription drugs are abused, prescription opioids take the lead. Chronic pain is frequently treated with prescription opioids, the clinical use of which nearly doubled from 2000 to 2010. This increase was accompanied by a rise in opioid abuse; it’s estimated that over two million people in the US currently abuse prescription opioids. Nearly 75% of prescription drug overdoses are caused by prescription opioid painkillers; these drugs are involved in more deaths than cocaine and heroin combined. In 2010, pharmaceutical drug overdoses were established as one of the leading causes of death in the US; drug overdoses were more lethal than firearms or motor vehicle accidents.

If you take any of the following you could be subject to drug abuse.

Opioids include:

Fentanyl (Duragesic®)

Hydrocodone (Vicodin®)

Oxycodone (OxyContin®)

Oxymorphone (Opana®)

Propoxyphene (Darvon®)

Hydromorphone (Dilaudid®)

Meperidine (Demerol®)

Diphenoxylate (Lomotil®)

Central nervous system depressants include:

Pentobarbital sodium (Nembutal®)

Diazepam (Valium®)

Alprazolam (Xanax®)

Stimulants include:

Dextroamphetamine (Dexedrine®)

Methylphenidate (Ritalin® and Concerta®)

Amphetamines (Adderall®)

The Most Popular Drug in America is an Antipsychotic—and No One Really Knows How it Works

The Raw Story – November 16, 2014

By Martha Rosenberg

Does anyone remember Thorazine? It was an antipsychotic given to mentally ill people, often in institutions, that was so sedating, it gave rise to the term “Thorazine shuffle.” Ads for Thorazine in medical journals, before drugs were advertised directly to patients, showed Aunt Hattie in a hospital gown, zoned out but causing no trouble to herself or anyone else. No wonder Thorazine and related drugs Haldol, Mellaril and Stelazine were called chemical straitjackets.

But Thorazine and similar drugs became close to obsolete in 1993 when a second generation of antipsychotics which included Risperdal, Zyprexa, Seroquel, Geodon and Abilify came online. Called “atypical” antipsychotics, the drugs seemed to have fewer side effects than their predecessors like dry mouth, constipation and the stigmatizing and permanent facial tics known as TD or tardive dyskinesia. (In actuality, they were similar.) More importantly, the drugs were obscenely expensive: 100 tablets of Seroquel cost as much as $2,000, Zyprexa, $1,680 and Abilify $1,644.

One drug that is a close cousin of Thorazine, Abilify, is currently the top-selling of all prescription drugs in the U.S. marketed as a supplement to antidepressant drugs, reports the Daily Beast. Not only is it amazing that an antipsychotic is outselling all other drugs, no one even knows how it works to relieve depression, writes Jay Michaelson. The standardized United States Product Insert says Abilify’s method of action is “unknown” but it likely “balances” brain’s neurotransmitters. But critics say antipsychotics don’t treat anything at all, but zone people out and produce oblivion. They also say there is a concerning rise in the prescription of antipsychotics for routine complaints like insomnia.

They are right. With new names and prices and despite their unknown methods of action, Pharma marketers have devised ways to market drugs like Abilify to the whole population, not just people with severe mental illness. Only one percent of the population, after all, has schizophrenia and only 2.5 percent has bipolar disorder. Thanks to these marketing ploys, Risperdal was the seventh best-selling drug in the world until it went off patent and Abilify currently rules.

More manipulations

Just as Big Pharma has camped out in Medicare and Medicaid, living on our tax dollars while fleeing to England to avoid taxes, Pharma has also camped out in the Department of Defense and Veterans Affairs.

Arguably, no drugs have been as good for Big Pharma as atypical antipsychotics within the military. In 2009, the Pentagon spent $8.6 million on Seroquel and VA spent $125.4 million—almost $30 million more than is spent on a F/A-18 Hornet.

Risperdal was even bigger in the military. Over a period of nine years, VA spent $717 million on its generic, risperidone, to treat PTSD in troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. Yet not only was risperidone not approved for PTSD, it didn’t even work. A 2011 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found the drug worked no better than placebo and the money was totally wasted.

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Health Care in America - Did You Hear About This in the News?

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Someone forgot to tell us the news we can use

I'm a curious sort so I try to understand the world view on America by following news sources from around the world.  It has always fascinated me how the American, and the television network and cable news stations in particular, seem to filter what we need to know.

So I check out the BBC in the UK and other sources in France, Germany, Russia, China, Japan, Mexico and South America every day.  Many international events are not even reported on American television.  In fact, a lot of American events are not reported on American television.

It makes one wonder.  Why are stories important to the world considered not important to our own television network and cable news shows?  Isn't that what they are supposed to do?

Take a look at the following stories that can be found around the world.  Don't you think it would be important to know about them?  Don't you think they have an impact on America?

 

America's Legal Drug Addiction

Prescription drug abuse has become a major problem in the United States. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 100 people die from drug overdoses everyday in the US; and nearly 3 of 4 drug overdoses are caused by prescription painkillers.

In other words, legally prescribed drug abuse results in 27,375 deaths a year, while illegal drug abuse results in just 9,125 deaths a year.  Think about it.  Three times as many people are killed by doctors as all the illegal drug dealers combined.

Deaths from Hospital Medical Errors Near 200,000 a year in USA

Preventable medical mistakes and infections are responsible for about 200,000 deaths in the U.S. each year, according to an investigation by the Hearst media corporation.

In a separate article by Dr. Gary Null, (archived at government statistics were gathered to present an overall picture of the extent of death-by-the medical-system serving the United States.

Here is a summary of the data supporting Dr. Null’s conclusion that the American medical system is the leading cause of death and injury in the United States resulting in at least 783,136 dead.

The medical system mortalities break down this way: adverse drug reactions: 106,000; medical error: 98,000; bedsores: 115,000; infection: 88,000; malnutrition: 108,000; outpatients: 199,000; unnecessary procedures: 37,136; and surgery-related: 32,000.

As Dr. Null explains, these are conservative estimates that do not attempt to overcome the considerable limitations of self-reporting regarding error and negligence.

Dr. Null's report is at:
http://www.mercola.com/2004/jul/7/healthcare_death.htm

Are Medical Mistakes Counted in "Leading Cause of Death Records in USA?

Leading Causes of Death

(Data are for the U.S. and are final 2009 data; For the most recent preliminary data see Deaths: Preliminary Data for 2010 [PDF - 724 KB])

Number of deaths for leading causes of death

·         Heart disease: 599,413

·         Cancer: 567,628

·         Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 137,353

·         Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 128,842

·         Accidents (unintentional injuries): 118,021

·         Alzheimer's disease: 79,003

·         Diabetes: 68,705

·         Influenza and Pneumonia: 53,692

·         Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 48,935

Posted by the US Center for Disease Control

Editors Note:

Do you see a category for any of the Medical Mistakes that cause deaths?  Neither the Hearst investigation nor the study by Dr. Gary Null which indicates there are nearly 800,000 deaths a year from Medical Mistakes are reflected in the CDC report.

Why are we not being told what is going on in America?

When considering these stories and the death totals note that the In Hospital Medical Error deaths (200,000) would rank it as the 3rd highest cause of death in America while the Medical Mistakes deaths (800,000) would make it the number one cause of death in America.

Is there a financial incentive for news media to NOT report the news?  Stay tuned for further updates.

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Health Care in America - "Corruption at the Core of the Collapse

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The Broken American Health Care System

What is the driving force behind the failure of the most expensive heath care system in the world to provide a better quality of life?  A lot of us have opinions.  So do the media, politicians and academia, but none seem to be addressing the reason behind every failure of an institution like medical care in society.

There comes a point when the institutions no longer serve the purpose they were created to address.  They evolve to a position where they believe the survival of the institution is more important than the mission of the institution.

When that happens, and inevitably it will when all good causes become their own bureaucracy, we have the seeds of corruption planted.

In America we spend about 9.9% of our disposable income on food.  Thirty years ago we spent 15% of our disposable income, meaning we spend over 5% less today on food than thirty years ago.

Now compare that to our experience with health care costs.

An article  was written June 28, 2009 by George Will titled: "Americans Will Regret Health Care Fix".  It described the cost of health care in America as follows.

The Hudson Institute's Betsy McCaughey, writing in The American Spectator, says that in 1960 the average American household spent 53 percent of its disposable income on food, housing, energy and health care. Today the portion of income consumed by those four has barely changed -- 55 percent. But the health care component has increased while the other three combined have decreased. This is partly because as societies become richer, they spend more on health care -- and symphonies, universities, museums, etc.

It is also because health care is increasingly competent. When the first baby boomers, whose aging is driving health care spending, were born in 1946, many American hospitals' principal expense was clean linen. This was long before MRIs, CAT scans and the rest of the diagnostic and therapeutic arsenal that modern medicine deploys.

In a survey released in April by NPR, the Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard, only 6 percent of Americans said they were willing to spend more than $200 a month on health care, and the price must fall to $100 a month before a majority are willing to pay it. But according to Grace-Marie Turner of the Galen Institute, Americans already are paying an average of $400 a month.

Most Americans do not know this because the cost of their care is hidden. Only 9 percent buy health coverage individually, and $84 of every $100 spent on health care is spent by someone (an employer, insurance company or government) other than recipients of the care. Those who get insurance as untaxed compensation from employers have no occasion to compute or confront the size of that benefit. But it is part of the price their employers pay for their work.

During the past thirty years health care as a percentage of our gross domestic product has grown by more than ten times.  That does not include your taxes paid for the government expenditures on health care.  The cost now is over $2.6 trillion a year and rising, both in terms of treatment and insurance.

Make no mistake, health care, long a public service through churches, non-profit organizations, government owned facilities and other resources, has now become BIG BUSINESS.

Pharmaceutical corporations led the way into making health care a profit center, not a public service, and now virtually every aspect of our health care system is privately owned, profit centered, and financed by Wall Street.

Wall Street may be reasonably good at financing new businesses like the Internet companies and health care industry but once Wall Street takes control of the industry through controlling the financing, that company serves a new master, Wall Street profitability.

Before you get out your protest banners and decide to occupy hospitals, I mean it is fashionable to protest against anyone we think is ripping off the public, look in the mirror because you are the one embracing a system now under the control of the financial institutions.

My point is this.  Health care is more about serving Wall Street interests than the people's interest.  Of course this is America and we encourage capitalism and these health care capitalists are operating within the framework of the law.  I guess if you owned stock in enough health care companies you would be profiting from the gouging of the American public with excessive health care costs, but most of us don't own health care stocks.

Our health care industry has evolved to the point where moral and financial corruption permeate the entire system, even corrupting those in the industry who really want to help people.

The medical industry is dependent on funneling millions in campaign funds to politicians who have to vote on their funding, in bribing doctors to prescribe drugs, in bribing universities to compete on a cut throat basis for grants from private corporations for survival, and for encouraging doctors to own testing equipment which in turn has to be justified to keep.

Conflicts of interest and ethics issues dominate the health care landscape.  It has become so financially competitive that excessive and unnecessary treatment is the order of the day as a simple and nearly undetectable way to pad the revenue stream.

Why X ray a single tooth if you can X ray the whole mouth?  Why take one or two spinal X rays when you can take multiple X rays of the spine?  Why not set up follow up doctor appointments for reasons of billing for the office visits rather than transmitting test results?

If a drug company pays a doctor to prescribe their drugs, and the more drugs prescribed the more the doctor makes, don't you think more prescriptions will be written?

How can FDA employees fairly evaluate a New Drug Application (NDA) worth potentially billions of dollars in new revenue if the same employees can quit their jobs and go to work for the same drug companies for far more money?

The top five drugs in terms of sales revenue in America all make between $3 and $5 billion a year for the owners, the pharmaceutical company.  If new health research or treatment does not generate profits first and foremost, it is of little value to a profit driven health care system.

If congress or the president eliminated conflicts of interest in the industry, both in terms of the relationship between government workers and the industry and between the industry and practitioners, it would be a great start to cost reduction.

The same conflict of interest exists when doctors are convinced to own expensive equipment like CAT scan and MRI machines, blood laboratories, pharmaceutical offices and others.  If Medicare or a health insurance company allows excessive CAT scans and MRI analysis for the purpose of making sure people are diagnosed and the doctors own the machines, don't you think more screens will be prescribed?

There are a thousand and one ways to get caught in a conflict in an industry that is barely regulated.  Usually there are industry watchdogs like the Securities and Exchange Commission assigned to keep an eye on the system.  However, even they are subject to the same conflicts because the SEC failed to see the housing and banking crisis coming.  More than likely they just turned their back to it.

A comprehensive and fair conflict of interest law could be proposed by the president and approved by congress and a thorough ethics law could be adopted by the medical and health care industries and that would start to unscramble the layers of conflicts and ethics violations we face today.

Unfortunately, such leadership by our politicians and health industries is nonexistent and will be as long as the industry finances the political campaigns in Washington and through the nation.  So we also need campaign financial reform, meaningful reform, to fix that inherent problem.

Fix the conflict of interest, draw up enforceable ethics laws, and clean up the campaign finance mess and it will lead directly to reduced health care costs.  Once again, nothing has been proposed by politicians to correct this mess.

Isn't it about time to REALLY start fixing things?

Our Broken Health Care System - Whom can you trust and whom can you believe?

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What a sad commentary to hear the news media talk about how our presidential candidates from Clinton to Christy, Bush to Fiorina, have suddenly begun talking about the dangers of prescription drugs and how addiction to prescriptions is causing a heroin epidemic in America.

Hillary should think about such things when her presidential campaign accepts all that money from Big Pharma and the Clinton Foundation accepts millions of more dollars from the same scoundrels.  One day the FBI will recover the missing emails and we will finally know the truth.

Until then, I have been writing articles for over a decade about the abuses in medicine and health care including the prescription drug explosion.  Demand our candidates tell us what they are going to do about it!  You will hear nothing.

This is the same road Barack Obama got away with when he took millions of dollars for his campaign from Big Pharma, then attacked them over health care.  Then he took $50 million from them to promote Obamacare when it was being debated and lo and behold, after it was approved the drug companies got everything they wanted and more.

I am reprinting the key articles I wrote exposing the dangerous condition of our health care system, all because it is grounded on profitability and not healing.  Obamacare is Eutopia for anyone desiring to keep people sick to maximize insurance payments and make no mistake my friends, they will do anything and everything necessary to make money by keeping you sick.

So your favorite family doctor gets a bonus when he prescribes certain prescriptions.  Where I come from they call that bribery, and millions and millions of dollars are involved.  Congress and the president make sure the doctors are exempt from liability if they prescribe these drugs, even if they lead to suicide or accidental overdoses.

Big Pharma pays off doctors to prescribe their drug and their drug leads to the death of the 

 user whether through adverse side effects or suicide from addiction to the prescribed drug.  So far you have committed bribery, used unfair business practices, had excessive prescriptions written, and killed your client, and you cannot even be held responsible.

Those lovable drug companies we see on television bring you relief from pain and drugs to help you sleep.  Sounds like a Columbian drug cartel to me.  As for the trusted doctors, they are the drug distributors, the ones condemning you to death, and there is no recourse for what either has done.

Well, we have a government allowing this insanity to take place, we have a health care system called Obamacare thriving on the carnage resulting from over-prescription, and we have health insurance companies paying the tab as long as the people paid their highly inflated premiums.

All of the assorted characters are responsible for the tens of thousands of suicides taking place and the hundreds of thousands of drug over-doses resulting in accidental or suicidal death.

"The Blood of American Victims is on the Hands of the People we Trusted most."

The following series of "broken health care system" articles explains how we, the people, are victimized, by a system with no morals, no ethics, and no justice, just profit and greed.

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