Drug Problem in America

By reading the title of this post, you may have assumed that what would follow might focus on teenagers and marijuana, crack, crank, speed, etc. But no, I have noticed a new problem that plagues our culture. Prescription drugs are taking over America. Everywhere you look, there is a commercial advertising a drug, a pen or a pad of paper hawking that same drug, a program sponsored by a drug, or a racecar with the drug on the side of the car.


But with all these drugs and their advertisements, I don’t know what half of them cure. And the other half, well, they are for Erectile Dysfunction. If you were an alien visiting planet earth, you might think that the biggest medical problems facing our society were not Cancer, HIV, or Influenza, but an inability to perform sexually. Do we need 15 pills (whose names I can’t pronounce or remember other than Viagra) to cure such a “disease”? Are we having problems reproducing that this sort of research is top priority? I don’t think so. 6 Billion people can’t be wrong.

I suppose what bugs me most though, is the price of prescription medicine. If you don’t have insurance but have any sort of illness that requires medicine, be prepared to take out a loan. Perhaps the most appalling part involves deception by the pharmacies. They and the doctors get kick backs by the drug companies to pander particular pills. My wife (who used to work in a pharmacy) tells me that for the majority of prescription medicines, there is a generic brand that is stamped at the exact same plant as the name brand stuff, only without the name on it. And these generic pills are sold at a fraction of the cost. The only catch—you have to ask for them. So next time you get a script written from your doctor, ask the pharmacist about generic drugs.



I have never been a drug guy. I don’t take anything for headaches, muscle tightness, or anything else. I tend to think the body is made to heal itself, and with a little help from nature we will eventually get better. But our immediate satisfaction and gratification society will not stand for that.

Lately, with my back problems, they have prescribed anti-inflammatories which have not particularly worked. Actually, I took Celebrex, which they took off the market after the linked it to heart attacks and such. Another reason why I don’t take drugs. But there are times when people who have serious diseases need medicine, and can’t afford it. This is a travesty and a gross oversight mostly because of the drug companies and those people who pop a pill at the first sign of problems. But I didn’t here much of this discussed during the presidential election. After all, things can’t be so bad. Look at the happy people in the drug commercials. Obviously, everything is better with drugs.