Big Pharma’s Drugs Linked to Spike in Crime

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Law enforcement officials are fighting a new war on drugs — the war on prescription drug addiction. They say that opiate painkillers and other prescription drugs are to blame for crime rate increases all around the nation.

“Home invasions, robberies, assaults, homicides and thefts — all kinds of crimes are being linked to prescription drugs,” Maine attorney general, Janet T. Mills, told the New York Times. Addicts are resorting to desperate criminal behavior in order to get their hands on these drugs. Their primary targets are the sick, the elderly and anyone else who has these pills sitting in their medicine cabinets.

In an effort to combat the problem, the DEA coordinated a National Take-Back Day, which was held on Saturday, September 25th. Americans were encouraged to bring their old prescription medications to locations throughout the country for safe disposal.

While the Take-Back Day may have helped to raise awareness of the growing problem of prescription drug addiction, and may have put a small dent in the number of old prescription drugs sitting unused in homes, it did nothing to address the real problem — the overprescribing of Big Pharma’s highly addictive medications.

If the average prescription drug consumer is routinely left with extra, unused medication after taking a drug according to their doctor’s instructions, it seems to me that doctors are routinely prescribing too much medication. And in doing so they are lining Big Pharma’s pockets and placing unnecessary financial burden on not only the consumer, but on our entire health system, and now it seems, our judicial system and law enforcement organizations.

A more effective approach would be to examine the reason that people have so many dangerous medications lying around in their houses in the first place, and why so many people are addicted to them. If you ask me, that reason is obvious — these drugs are being given out like candy.

I think it’s a good sign that the DEA has publicly acknowledged the threat posed to public safety by an overabundance of pharmaceutical drugs. I hope it is a sign that our government agencies are becoming concerned about the monster that Big Pharma has helped to create — a nation of prescription pill addicts, some of whom it seems will stop at nothing to get the drugs they are addicted to.

And it doesn’t stop there. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is also looking into the potential negative effects of pharmaceuticals reaching the nation’s water supply. Recent studies have detected the presences of antidepressants, birth control and painkillers in municipal drinking water around the U.S.

The latest statistics indicate that the nation’s prescription drug problem is worsening. The number of Americans seeking treatment for painkiller addiction has risen by more than 400% since 1998, according to numbers from the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

Reports of adverse drug reactions have skyrocketed in recent years, resulting in the deaths of an estimated 20,000 Americans last year. There are some who believe that this number may be even higher, due to selective misreporting of causes of death.

When will the madness end? When will our government agencies stop beating around the bush and take Big Pharma head-on? Or perhaps the better question is: When will we stop allowing ourselves to be victimized by Big Pharma and the medical system that supports it?

It’s a complicated matter, and I’ll be the first to acknowledge that certain pharmaceutical drugs improve and save lives. However, I believe that if natural solutions to pain and other problems typically were more readily embraced, the issue would begin to resolve itself.

Sources:

http://www.naturalnews.com/029861_pharmas_crime.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/24/us/24drugs.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1285772645-7FCkEeaFfUJUjsbpjNnZXA

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/23/AR2010092303233.html

Tags: Big Pharma, drug dangers, pharmaceutical dangers