Prescription Drug Addiction in Kids – How Big Pharma Shamelessly Promotes It

Article by Gloria MacTaggart

What image immediately pops to mind when you think “drug pusher.” If it’s a grimy guy in an alley, or a slick dude wearing seven gold chains around his neck hanging around a school yard, think again. The new and most dangerous drug pushers wear suits; they sell and promote prescription drugs and fuel prescription drug addiction – even among children.

Big Pharma, in what is possibly the most shameless promotional move in history, provides free samples of drugs that have not been safety-tested in children and have not been approved for use among children by the FDA. The sales people privately, secretly, in fact, because it’s against the law, speak with your doctor about how good the drugs would be for their pediatric population, give him free samples, and your trusting but ill-informed doctor gives them to you for your kids.

More than one in 20 American children receive free drug samples, according to a study published in the October issue of Pediatrics, and one in 10 of the kids who actually get a prescription also got some of their drugs as free samples. It’s just like the stereotypical drug pusher we’ve all heard about – the first hits are free.

Stattera and Adderall, both used to treat so-called attention deficit hyperactivity disorder – that’s when your kid can’t sit still and pay attention in class – were among the top drugs distributed. They are also on the Drug Enforcement Agency list of drugs most likely to cause prescription drug addiction and abuse.

Four of the top 15 sample drugs also have serious safety concerns, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and some even have black box warnings.

Big Pharma stops at nothing. After all, prescription drug addiction, dependency and abuse has become a profit center for them. The millions of dollars they spend on defending themselves in court or paying fines and out-of -court settlements are simply part of the cost of doing business. And the fact that lives are ruined by prescription drug addiction, overdoses and serious illness or injury is as impersonal as the small appliance manufacturer that knows and is prepared for the fact that a certain number of consumers just won’t like their toasters. Big deal.

Not all drug companies are like that. Some have a sense of social responsibility. Some take the Hippocratic oath seriously, even though they’re not part of the medical profession. They know people’s lives are in their hands and they have their consumers’ best interests, not just their wallets, at heart.

Unfortunately, the prescription drug addiction epidemic, fuelled by Big Pharma whose direct-to-consumer advertising spreads the virus as surely as a busy hooker in a doorway, gives all the good guys, and the industry, a very bad name.

Let’s hope the disgrace of prescription drug addiction doesn’t take down the whole industry – denying people access to real life-saving drugs.

There are many doctors, pharmacists and others in the medical profession up in arms against the unethical activities of Big Pharma. They see that prescription drug addiction and abuse is indeed an epidemic, they see prescription drug rehab centers filling up with legal drug addicts, and they look Big Pharma squarely in the eye as the primary cause of the problem. Perhaps if more pharmaceutical companies jumped on the bandwagon, they could save their own industry and their own reputations. Not to mention hundreds of thousands of lives.