Big Pharma Markets to and Profits from a 'Can't-Pay-Attention Nation'

 Are you a child who would rather look out the window and imagine yourself flying or doing something else cool than doing math problems in school? Then you are psychologically ill. Here, drugs! Kids, remember--don't do drugs...except for these. They are just as bad as the ones they sell on your school playground and they don't make you better! In fact, all they do is turn you into an addict who will experience the pain of withdrawal symptoms once a rational human being with your better welfare in mind decides to save you by taking you off them. Doesn't that sound great? ~A.M.A.

Some of you might remember back in the days when it was illegal to advertise prescription drugs anywhere other than established medical journals and trade magazines, before Pharma companies started hiring strippers to make calls on doctors' offices and keep those ineffective overly prescribed drugs flowing to a nation of daydreaming overweight hypochondriacs. Oh, American Exceptionalism -- you are the greatest oxymoron/misnomer for a non-existent concept ever! Unless they changed the definition of exceptional to mean stupidly docile and unquestioningly gullible. Absurd, you say? Not anymore, folks. Not if you have a lot of money. Fun fact: the generic name for Adderall is "amphetamine salts." No attempt at misdirection there. You are making your child take a drug that would get you 10 years in prison if you bought it from anybody other than the legal corporate drug dealing establishments whose products actually have worse side effects than the illegal kind. And dig this: symptoms for ADHD are nearly as arbitrary as those for fybromyalgia or Lyme Disease--both of which were once considered non-ailments, malingerer's diseases. So, any random professional expert can observe a child acting like a child ("what? my child would rather be outside playing than inside at school being bored to death doing long division? Please prescribe a drug that will cause health complications later in life in addition to stunting their growth, killing their appetites and forming what might turn out to be a lifelong addiction, as well as creating a human now with a predilection toward addiction. A co-opted medical system profiting from selling useless AND dangerous chemicals as a bogus treatment for made-up illnesses. Another fun fact: for a drug to be approved by the FDA, all it has to demonstrate that it "as effective as the placebo," the sugar pill that makes "mind over matter" equally effective for your high cholesterol as the FDA approved $250 bottle of pills. So, if you get a disease, just convince yourself that consuming more sugar is the key to becoming healthy once again, Type II diabetes be damned.

Monday, December 16, 2013 by Common Dreams

Our Children are So Screwed

A twenty-year marketing campaign has made highly powerful stimulants into household names... and they're just getting started

- Jon Queally, staff writer


Having chemically-saturated the youth market, the drug marketeers for powerful stimulants like Adderall are now bringing their message to the adult masses. What came first: the disorder, the cure, or the marketing campaign to sell both?

“You’re talking about a product that’s having a major impact on brain chemistry. Parents are very susceptible to this type of stuff.” –Roger Griggs, pharma exec who now objects to ad campaigns

In the case of medicating a generation of children who were said to be "unusually hyperactive," the answer to that question is addressed by an in-depth investigation by the New York Times on Monday showing that the meteoric rise of diagnoses of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (A.D.H.D.)—a trend that spawned a pharmaceutical gold rush over the last twenty years—was, in fact, fueled by an industry-led marketing campaign that targeted struggling children, worried parents, and an army of doctors willing to diagnose and prescribe.

And what's worse? The deep-pocketed, pill-pushers are now looking to expand.a 'Can't-Pay-Attention Nation'

As the Times reports:

The rise of A.D.H.D. diagnoses and prescriptions for stimulants over the years coincided with a remarkably successful two-decade campaign by pharmaceutical companies to publicize the syndrome and promote the pills to doctors, educators and parents. With the children’s market booming, the industry is now employing similar marketing techniques as it focuses on adult A.D.H.D., which could become even more profitable.

Dr. Keith Conners, a psychologist and professor emeritus at Duke University—who called the rising rates “a national disaster of dangerous proportions”—points out that though A.D.H.D is likely to occur in about 5 percent of the population, recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that the diagnosis had been made in 15 percent of high school-age children, and that the number of children on medication for the disorder soared from 600,000 in 1990 to 3.5 million today.
“The numbers make it look like an epidemic. Well, it’s not. It’s preposterous,” he told the Times in an interview. “This is a concoction to justify the giving out of medication at unprecedented and unjustifiable levels.”

In example after example, the marketing push created by the drug manufacturers show happy children and happy parents citing the wonders of the drugs, which go by their increasingly well-known names—stimulants like Adderall, Concerta, Focalin and Vyvanse, and nonstimulants like Intuniv and Strattera. As the Times reports,  

every single one of the companies who market these pills has been fined by the FDA for false advertising.

"The decision to start long-term medication should be motivated by observations of patients and physicians, not stimulated by rosy ads." –Kurt Stange, professor of family medicine

But the ads keep coming, it seems, because the ads work.

According to the Times:

Profits for the A.D.H.D. drug industry have soared. Sales of stimulant medication in 2012 were nearly $9 billion, more than five times the $1.7 billion a decade before, according to the data company IMS Health.

Even Roger Griggs, the pharmaceutical executive who introduced Adderall in 1994, said he strongly opposes marketing stimulants to the general public because of their dangers. He calls them “nuclear bombs,” warranted only under extreme circumstances and when carefully overseen by a physician.

Psychiatric breakdown and suicidal thoughts are the most rare and extreme results of stimulant addiction, but those horror stories are far outnumbered by people who, seeking to study or work longer hours, cannot sleep for days, lose their appetite or hallucinate. More can simply become habituated to the pills and feel they cannot cope without them.

According to Griggs and others, the idea that drugs like Adderall are being marketed directly to the public is perhaps the key flaw.

“There’s no way in God’s green earth we would ever promote” a controlled substance like Adderall directly to consumers, Mr. Griggs said as he was shown several advertisements. “You’re talking about a product that’s having a major impact on brain chemistry. Parents are very susceptible to this type of stuff.”

And Kurt Stange, a professor of family medicine and community health at Case Western Reserve University, agrees and recommends that this practice be banned.

In an op-ed published alongside the Times reporting, Stange writes:

Drugs have harms as well as benefits, and the harms are greater when drugs are indiscriminately prescribed. Consumer advertising, delivered to the masses as a shotgun blast, rather than as specific information to concerned patients or caregivers, results in more prescriptions and less appropriate prescribing.

There is no evidence that consumer ads improve treatment quality or result in earlier provision of needed care. Research has shown that the ads convey an unbalanced picture, with benefits and emotional appeals given far greater weight than risks. Clinicians can work to override these miscues, but this steals precious time from activities that can provide real benefit to patients. In the packed agenda of the patient visit, in which so many real concerns and evidence-based care are available to make a difference in people's lives, the intrusion of marketing risks harm.

Advertising also provokes a subtle shift in our culture -- toward seeking a pill for every ill. While there are many for whom stimulants and other medications can be a godsend, the case of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is a prime example of how, too often, a pill substitutes for more human responses to distress. U.S. clinicians prescribe stimulant medication for A.D.H.D. at a rate 25 times that of their European counterparts. The complex decision to start a long-term medication should be motivated by the observations of teachers and parents and children, in the context of a relationship with a caring clinician − not stimulated by rosy ads.

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Isn't your child's health worth the risk of further increasing the obscene wealth of the officers, board and shareholders of  FDA approved and sanctioned legal corporate drug dealers? 

Why do you hate America?

Breaking Bad Season 5 teaser

Chemical Warfare: The US Military's Pill Addiction

Thursday, April 12, 2012 by Common Dreams
by Robert C. Koehler

To fight our insane wars, we’re wrecking our soldiers’ ability to live with themselves and function in society, then regulating what’s left of them with chemicals, which often make things immeasurably worse.

In the pursuit of order, could we possibly be creating more chaos, not simply externally — in the shattered countries we’re leaving in our wake — but internally, in the minds of those soldiers?

The Los Angeles Times noted that Air Force pilot Patrick Burke was recently acquitted in a court-marital hearing on charges of auto theft, drunk driving and two counts of assault — due to “polysubstance-induced delirium.” This was, the Times explained, a turning point: the first official acknowledgement, by military psychiatrists and a court-martial judge, that the drugs that have become a routine part of military service — in Burke’s case, the prescribed amphetamine Dexedrine (“go pills”) — can contribute to temporary insanity.

Better living through chemistry!

The chemical fix pervades the whole culture, of course, and while drugs can produce astounding results, they are demonically seductive and always have a down side. And nowhere, it seems, is their misuse more dramatic than in the modern military.

“After two long-running wars with escalating levels of combat stress, more than 110,000 active-duty Army troops last year were taking prescribed antidepressants, narcotics, sedatives, antipsychotics and anti-anxiety drugs, according to figures recently disclosed to The Times by the U.S. Army surgeon general,” Kim Murphy writes in the Times article. “Nearly 8 percent of the active-duty Army is now on sedatives and more than 6 percent is on antidepressants — an eightfold increase since 2005.”

Murphy quotes psychiatrist Peter Breggin, who has written on the correlation between drug use and violence: “Prior to the Iraq war, soldiers could not go into combat on psychiatric drugs, period. Not very long ago . . . you couldn’t even go into the armed services if you used any of these drugs, in particular stimulants.”

“Nearly 8 percent of the active-duty Army is now on sedatives and more than 6 percent is on antidepressants — an eightfold increase since 2005.”

Now he’s hearing from soldiers who tell him “the psychiatrist won’t approve their deployment unless they take psychiatric drugs.”

Uh, this sounds like addiction, and not on the part of the soldiers. The military itself is addicted to . . . well, as Murphy explains, “the modern Army psychiatrist’s deployment kit is likely to include nine kinds ofantidepressants, benzodiazepines for anxiety, four antipsychotics, two kinds of sleep aids, and drugs for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, according to a 2007 review in the journal Military Medicine.”

And the attorneys for Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, the alleged lone killer of 17 Afghans last month, have asked for a list of all the medications he was taking. There’s a great deal of speculation about whether he was on one drug in particular, the anti-malarial drug mefloquine, which has been linked to bizarre and violent behavior and induces what’s known in the ranks as “mefloquine rage.”

All of which makes me think of the out-of-control use of chemicals in global agribusiness, in its for-profit zeal to turn the planet’s arable land into endless acres of monoculture, in utter defiance of, and war against, the diversity of nature. This is our war against “pests” and “weeds,” and, like our war against “evil,” a.k.a., terrorism, or whatever, and our determination to impose an economic and political monoculture on the whole planet, we’re not simply losing, we’re destroying ourselves.

“‘Farmers need technology right now to help them with issues such as weed resistance,’ a Dow official said last month. Translation? Farmers need technology right now to help them with issues created by . . . technology introduced 15 years ago,” Verlyn Klinkenborg wrote recently in Yale Environment 360 (reprinted at Common Dreams).

“Instead of urging farmers away from uniformity and toward greater diversity,” he went on, “the USDA is helping them do the same old wrong thing faster. When an idea goes bad, the USDA seems to think, the way to fix it is to speed up the introduction of ideas that will go bad for exactly the same reason. And it’s always, somehow, the same bad idea: the uniform application of an anti-biological agent, whether it’s a pesticide in crops or an antibiotic on factory farms. The result is always the same. Nature finds a way around it, and quickly.”

This is the domination mindset: As we seek dominion over nature and dominion over the nations of the world, we whack at our perceived enemies with an endless barrage of same old, same old, in increasingly lethal dosages. And when the war backs up into our psyches, we turn the chemical barrage on our own minds, on our own souls.

What will it take to transform institutionalized rage and fear into something that doesn’t emanate from the reptile brain? How do we put love into collective motion? Until we do, the world will keep looking more and more like a sci-fi techno-dystopia.

The Failed War on Drugs

Drugged Out America

by DAVID ROSEN

 

In 1982, Nancy Reagan formally launched the post-modern prohibition movement, the war on drugs.   While begun under President Richard Nixon, her infamous “Just Say No” speech at the Longfellow Elementary School in Oakland, CA, officially established the war on drugs as national policy.

Her original campaign sought to address an assortment of alleged youthful vices, including alcohol and drug use, peer violence and premarital sex.  However, shrewd moralists, clever politicians and opportunists within the police-corporate system (the domestic corollary to President Dwight Eisenhower’s military-industrial complex) used the speech to capture the new cash cow, the war on drugs.

During the last three decades, the war on drugs has proven an ever-deepening failure.  Like 1920s Prohibition that fashioned the modern crime syndicate, this “war” established a new service business for corporate capitalism, the prison-industrial complex.

While it is impossible to tabulate the full costs of drug use in the U.S., even the most conservative estimates are staggering. Millions of people (some estimates run as high as 20% of the population) either regularly abuse or are addicted to “drugs,” whether legal or illegal, whether a commercial or underground product.  One estimate places the costs associated with of drug addiction/abuse at “over $484 billion per year” that includes costs for policing, healthcare, crime and lost earnings.

In 2010, the U.S. government spent an estimated $15 billion waging its fruitless war on drugs.  Two academic experts, Jeffrey Miron and Katherine Waldock, estimate that de-criminalizing (i.e., regulating) currently illegal drugs would save Americans approximately $41 billion a year in federal and state government expenditures relating to drug enforcement.

In the years since Mrs. Reagan uttered her dubious words, the total costs of the war on drugs is estimated at $1 trillion. According to a study released by the Associated Press in 2010, the $1 trillion expenditure covers: border efforts at interception drug trafficking; foreign drug wars in Afghanistan, Mexico and Columbia; arrest and prosecution of those in federal prisons for drug offenses; arrest and prosecution nonviolent drug offenders at the state and local levels; and marketing “Just Say No”-style messages to America’s youth and other abstinence programs.

The AP concludes its report with the following cautionary words: “This year, 25 million Americans will snort, swallow, inject and smoke illicit drugs, about 10 million more than in 1970, with the bulk of those drugs imported from Mexico.”[http://nevergetbusted.com/2010/articles/ap-us-drug-war-has-met-none-of-its-goals]

The line between the legal and the illegal, like that between the moral and immoral or the licit and illicit, is arbitrary.  It is a terrain of social conflict that changes over time through popular struggle.  At any one time, the line appears “fixed” as much by moral authority as by formal legal regulation and enforcement practice.  However, the appearance of “fixed,” to the extent that it can be, is in name only.

The failed temperance campaign that culminated in the passage of the 18^th Amendment establishing 13 years of Prohibition (and which was repealed by the 21^st Amendment) unraveled after the 1929 stock market crash.  Today’s “war on drugs” is unraveling.  Its failure is evident in the ever-growing costs related to enforcement, at the federal, state and city levels, as well as the social and personal costs incurred by those who succumb to their drug of choice.

It appears that a goodly proportion of Americans, either just once for fun or on a more continuing basis, have taken an illegal substance or have a family member, friend or neighbor whose been arrested due to a drug-related offense (including alcohol-related acts).  This common awareness underlies the nationwide effort to establish a new drug policy, one from the bottom up. It is defined by efforts to legalize medical marijuana clinics (now legal in 16 states and the District of Columbia) and to decriminalize “non-hard” drugs like marijuana and some party drugs (e.g., LSD).  In the wake of the fiscal crises faced by many states, there has been a move to reduce the nonviolent prison population, particularly those arrested for a nonviolent drug-related offense.

In the wake of the Great Depression, America ended Prohibition, an unworkable and expensive moralistic campaign masquerading as public policy.  (The church had taken control of the state, imposing its temperance beliefs as national policy.) As economic and social pressures mount during the aftermath of the Great Recession, there will likely be a significant increase in all manner of drug taking throughout the nation. This will, hopefully, lead to a rethinking of the nation’s failed “war on drugs.” Lets hope.

* * *

America is a drugged-out nation.  To appreciate the enormity of drug use, one needs to acknowledge the scope of “drug” taking.  The first step in this process is to give up the fiction that separates the legal from the illegal, the regulated from the un-regulated and the over-the-counter from backstreet drugs.  A second step is to map out the labyrinth-like world of the abused and/or addictive drugs and see how they saturate social life.

Ken Liska, in “Drugs and the Human Body,” defines a drug as “any absorbed substance that changes or enhances any physical or psychological function in the body.”

The following overview of drug taking in America is necessarily cursory, outlining the boundaries to this (in a 1950’s film noirsense) underworld.  Information is drawn predominately from federal sources, including the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy, the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

Legal unregulated “drugs”
Today, coffee, sugar and chocolate are widely enjoyed products that some considering harmful “drugs.”   Many, many Americans can’t image starting the day without that first cup of java, cut with a hearty dose of sugar and topped off with a tasty chocolate donut.

Coffee
One of the first “drugs” to take hold of the West was coffee, introduced into Europe in 1645.  In England, for example, coffee houses flourished, serving as the era’s “speakeasies,” inebriating the new merchant class.  Over the next century, efforts by the powers-that-be to close these houses of ill repute were repeatedly rebuffed.  It was not until 1820 that coffee’s active ingredient, caffeine, a psychoactive stimulant, was identified.  Between 2001-2004 some 265 cases of caffeine overdoses ended up in Emergency Rooms visits.  While medical authorities do not list caffeine as an addictive drug, some Christian religious groups do so and encourage their members to avoid it.

Sugar
Coffee drinking is aided by another often-alleged addictive substance, sugar.  Sugar has been in the West since the Crusades, brought back from the Holy Lands as a new spice.  In the U.S, sugar is considered a food but has no nutritional value.  However, withdrawal from sugar can be as difficult as cutting coffee or alcohol.  Many warn that people couldn’t get enough sugar and that it made people hyperirritable.  Research shows that sugar affects opioids and dopamine in the brain, and thus might be addictive.  Some researchers have found that cocaine and methamphetamine addicts eat a lot of sugar.

Chocolate
While Columbus first brought back cocoa beans to Europe, Cortès popularized it in Spain in the 1520s; a century later it spread to the rest of Europe.  Chocolate, along with other sweet and high-fat foods, releases serotonin that makes people happier. Cocoa products contain neuroactive alkaloids common to wine, beer and liquor.  Today, many people, but especially woman, are called “chocoholics” and, when denied their “drug” of choice, suffer withdrawal symptoms, including seasonal affective disorder (SAD) and pre-menstrual syndrome.

Legal regulated drugs
Three other legal drugs, alcohol, tobacco and prescription medications, are regulated to varying degrees by individual states, localities and/or the federal government.

Alcohol
Alcohol, like tobacco, is an over-the-counter consumer product regulated principally by buyer age requirements.  With the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, alcohol has become a huge industry.  According to an alcohol-industry trade association,  “the U.S. beverage alcohol industry contributed nearly $382 billion to the U.S. total economic activity in 2007.”  (“Contributed” includes wages, taxes and a nebulous category dubbed “economic activity” seems to mean sales.)  Its legality comes with a significant social cost.

Ethyl alcohol (or ethanol) is the intoxicating ingredient found in beer, wine and liquor.  A standard drink contains 0.6 ounces of pure ethanol; this is equivalent to 12 ounces of beer, 8 ounces of malt liquor, 5 ounces of wine or 1.5 ounces (a “shot”) of 80-proof distilled spirits.

In 2009, 52 percent of Americans age 12 and older are considered regular drinkers, having consumed alcohol at least once in the 30 days prior to the survey.  More revealing, federal data shows that 24 percent of drinkers had binged (5+ drinks within 2 hours) and 7 percent drank heavily (5+ drinks on 5+ occasions).*  However, per capita alcohol consumption has declined over 12 percent over the last three decades, to 2.31 in 2007 gallons from 2.64 gallons in 1977.

Since 1982, the number of alcohol-related driving fatalities has been cut nearly in half: in 2008, 13,846 people died in car crashes due to drunk drivers compared to 26,173 in 1982.  Mirroring the decline in drunk-driving fatalities, the rate of drunk driving for the 2006-2009 is estimated at 13.2 percent, a decline from the 14.6 percent for the 2002-2005 period.

In 2008, 70 percent of the an estimated 189,000 alcohol-related emergency room visits made by patients aged 12 to 20 involved alcohol only; 30.0 percent involved alcohol in combination with other drugs.  Between 1975 and 2005, deaths due to liver cirrhosis has remained relatively consistent at approximately 12,900 deaths per year.
[*Data drawn from National Survey on Drug Use and Health at www.samhsa.gov]

Tobacco
Cigarettes have (almost) lost their cool.  Of Americans 18 years and older, an estimated 46 million still smoke cigarettes. Smoking is more common among men (24%) than women (18%).  In the U.S., cigarette smoking is the leading cause of preventable deaths, accounting for approximately 443,000 deaths (or 1 of every 5 deaths) each year.

In the nearly half century since the U.S. Surgeon General issued a report linking smoking to cancer in 1964, there has had a dramatic decline is smoking.  Since 1998, tobacco sales in the U.S. have declined by 2 percent a year; since 2000, there has been an 18 percent decline in the number of cigarette packs sold: 17.4 billion packs were sold in 2007 compared to 21.1 billion packs in 2000.

However, this has taken place with a significant uptick in the number of “cigarette pack equivalents” (CPE’s), non-cigarette nicotine product, totaling 1.10 billion CPEs.  These include: 714 million moist snuff, 256 million roll-your-own tobacco and 130 million small cigars.

Prescription medications
A doctor’s prescription is required to “legally” purchase a pharmaceutical medical drug.  In 2009, 16 million Americans age 12 and older had taken a prescription pain reliever, tranquilizer, stimulant or sedative for nonmedical purposes at least once in the prior year prior.  From 2004 to 2008, the reported incidents of prescription drug overdoses more than doubled to 305,885 from 144,644.

Among the leading abused prescription drugs are: opioids (for pain), depressants (for anxiety and sleep disorders) and stimulants (for ADHD and narcolepsy).  Opioids include OxyContin, Vicodin and Percocet; depressants or tranquilizers include barbiturates such as pentobarbital sodium (e.g., Nembutal) and benzodiazepines such as diazepam (aka Valium) and alprazolam (aka Xanax); and stimulants include dextroamphetamine (e.g., Dexedrine), methylphenidate (e.g., Ritalin and Concerta) and amphetamines (e.g., Adderall).

With regard to antidepressants, in 2008, adolescents made 23,124 visits to an emergency room for drug-related suicide attempts, and young adults made 38,036 such visits; of these visits, 23 percent of the adolescents and 18 percent of young adults did so for “OD-ing” on an antidepressant.

Since 1998, there has been a significant increase in the hospital admissions of benzodiazepines tranquilizers like Valium and Xanax.  While hospital admissions over reactions to depressants increased 11 percent between 1998 and 2008, benzodiazepine-related admissions nearly tripled.

Prescription steroids, which increase muscle mass and may be prescribed for muscle-wasting conditions like cancer and AIDS, are also subject to abuse by athletes and non-athletes.  Most often, they are taken to improve the user’s appearance or performance.  Good luck.

Washington’s Attorney General, Rob McKenna, among a growing number of state and federal law-enforcement officials, has called the rise in prescription drugs an “epidemic.”  Federal data shows that among young people ages 12-17, prescription drugs have become the second most abused illegal drug, behind marijuana.  Teens report they get prescription drugs from parents’ medicine cabinets, other people’s prescriptions and that they are “available everywhere.”

Unregulated illegal drugs
These drugs make up what are known as the “hard” drugs, easy to abuse and seriously addictive.  They include cocaine, heroin and marijuana; many consider marijuana a “soft” drug, like alcohol, and should be decriminalized and its sale regulated like tobacco.

Cocaine
Cocaine, also known as coke, snow and flake, is a powerful stimulate that can be snorted, injected or smoked; crack is cocaine hydrochloride powder processed to form a rock crystal that is then smoked.  Cocaine gives people a real high, making them feel euphoric and energetic; however, it increases blood pressure and heart rate, often leading to heart attacks, strokes and seizures.  In 2009, 4.8 million Americans age 12 and older had abused cocaine in some form and 1.0 million had abused crack at least once in the previous year.

Heroin
Heroin, also known as H, smack or junk, is the hardest of the “hard” drugs.  Processed from morphine, it usually appears as a white or brown powder or as a black, sticky substance.  Injecting, snorting or smoking H makes one feel euphoric; however, it depresses breathing, thus, an overdose can be fatal.  In 2009, 605,000 Americans age 12 and older had abused heroin at least once in the prior year.

Marijuana
Marijuana, derived from the dried parts of the Cannabis sativa hemp plant, is the most commonly used illegal drug in the U.S. In 2009, 28.5 million Americans age 12 and older had smoked marijuana at least once in the previous year.  Known as pot, mary jane, ganga, weed or grass, smoking it makes one feel euphoric, often distorting perceptions, memory recall and conventional linear thinking.  One feels high.

Unregulated club drugs
These drugs make up what are known as the “party” drugs, taken at bars, nightclubs and concerts; they are even easier to abuse and can lead to serious abuse.  While club goers might take cocaine, heroine and marijuana to enhance a good time, a crop of specialty drugs have emerged designed tp enhance a singular good time.  These include LSD (aka acid), MDMA (aka ecstasy) and PCP (aka angel dust) as well as Rohypnol (aka roofies), GHB (aka liquid ecstasy) and ketamine (aka special K, vitamin K, jet).  And there’s also methamphetamine that is really in a class by itself.

LSD
Acid became popular during the oh-so psychedelic ‘60s, altering perceptions and invoking a world of hallucinations.  Acid “trips” can last about 12 hours and, for some, fostering enormous pleasure, for others terrifying delusions.  In 2009, 779,000 Americans age 12 and older had abused LSD at least once in the prior year.

MDMA
MDMA (aka 3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine) better known as ecstasy, is a synthetic stimulate with psychoactive properties.  In 2009, 2.8 million Americans age 12 and older had abused MDMA at least once in the prior year.  Most disturbing, a 2010 NIDA study found that 4.5 percent of 12th graders had used MDMA at least once in the prior year.

PCP
PCP (phencyclidine) is a synthetic drug popularly known as angel dust, ozone, wack and rocket fuel and can be snorted, smoked or eaten.  It is a “dissociative” drug, distorting perceptions of sight and sound.  However, many users complain of unpleasant psychological effects that mimic schizophrenia, including delusions, hallucinations and extreme anxiety.  In 2009, 122,000 Americans age 12 and older had abused PCP at least once in the prior year.

Methamphetamine
Methamphetamine is a very addictive stimulant that goes by a variety of street names, including meth, speed, chalk, ice, crystal and glass.  More revealing, it has become known as white people’s crack and is very toxic to the central nervous system.  In 2009, 1.2 million Americans age 12 and older had used methamphetamine at least once in the prior year.

* * *

Abstinence was imposed on the nation in 1920 and repealed in 1933; the 18^th Amendment establishing Prohibition is the only Amendment to be repealed.  In the early 20^th century, Americans could get ripped on good-old Coca-Cola.  Originally intended as a patent medicine, Coke once contained an estimated nine milligrams of cocaine per glass. By the ‘20s, the coke was out but caffeine gave the drink a jolt.

In 1937, just four years after the passage of the 21^st Amendment repealing Prohibition, Congress passed the Marihuana Tax Act.  During the ‘30s, hemp was popular and profitable, used for a variety of commercial purposes, including the smoking kind. The Act sought to garner the federal government much needed tax revenues without outlawing marijuana production or consumption.

In 1970, President Nixon championed the Controlled Substances Act that superseded the Marihuana Act and started the war on drugs.  In a 1970 speech, he declared, “this nation faces a major crisis in terms of the increasing use of drugs, particularly among our young people.”  A year later, he upped the ante: “Public enemy No. 1 in the United States is drug abuse. In order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new, all-out offensive.”   America’s war on “domestic terrorism” had begun.

Now, four decades later, the forces of moral order, in league with the police-corporate complex, have scooped up $1 trillion and left behind a failed, second temperance movement, the “war on drugs.”  These drug-opportunists have left wrecked lives in their wake.  An untold number of drug-related dead bodies and destroyed lives litter the national landscape.

Nationally, prescription drug abuse is killing more people than crack cocaine in the 1980s and heroin in the 1970s combined. Now, as the Great Recession begins to draw out to (dare I say) a possible second Great Depression, financial reality might force those in power (whether moralist, politician, police or greedy corporate con-artist milking the drug scam) to abandon the prohibitionist mindset that has been in-force since Nixon.

As the Great Recession drags on and misery intensifies, the ab/use of both legally-regulated and illegal drugs will likely increase.  It’s time to rethink America’s failed drug policy.  Get ready for the coming drug tsunami.

Who Can You Sue? Better Call Saul

From Crackle: Who Can You Sue?

From Crackle: Wayfarer 515

Therapeutic Bath Salts Getting People High

Creative Drug Trend: Snorting Bath Salts
by JacobSloan on January 12, 2011

Authorities in Louisiana and Utah (below) are attempting to crack down on the growing practice of ingesting therapeutic bath salts for the purpose of achieving an amphetamine-like high. Supposedly intended for pampering the skin, the mineral packets’ contents are smoked or snorted like cocaine, and are so popular that they are now sold at smoke shops.

vidlink