{"id":1136,"date":"2014-12-17T09:34:20","date_gmt":"2014-12-17T14:34:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sobriety.ca\/blog\/?p=1136"},"modified":"2025-12-26T11:58:32","modified_gmt":"2025-12-26T16:58:32","slug":"the-pharmaceutical-mess-in-north-america-is-it-all-about-profits-or-is-there-someone-else-to-blame","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sobriety.ca\/blog\/2014\/12\/the-pharmaceutical-mess-in-north-america-is-it-all-about-profits-or-is-there-someone-else-to-blame\/","title":{"rendered":"The Pharmaceutical Mess in North America. Is it All About Profits? Or is There Someone Else to Blame?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Sobriety.ca<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The drug problem in North America is at it’s breaking point. Illegal drugs like heroin are devastating communities, towns and cities across the US and Canada. This article, however, is not about dangerous street drugs. It’s about the rampant over-prescribing practices in North America and not just for the drugs you may be thinking of like prescription painkillers. Yes, painkiller abuse is a hot button issue right now because of the vast number of people taking them every day for both legitimate and improper reasons. But the truth is there are other substances out there, legal ones, that are lining the pockets of pharmaceutical CEO’s. Obviously the industry is out to make money, both in Canada and the US. The problem is is that there are simply too many people using drugs like antidepressants, sedatives, tranquilizers and, of course, painkillers. In the US right now there are 30 million people taking antidepressants. Last year 250 million prescriptions for narcotic painkillers were issued. Is it possible that that many people actually need to take the drugs? There’s no way. It would be logical to assume that many of those prescriptions are going to people who fully intend to misuse them in order to get high, just as many people will abuse their Ativan prescriptions in order to relax and mellow out, similar to a person who smoke’s pot \u201cjust to relax\u201d. There is no doubt in many people’s minds that the pharmaceutical companies are making money off of people who are addicted to certain medications, and it seems that there isn’t reform or legislation coming anytime soon.<\/p>\n

I came across a list of 21 facts regarding the American pharmaceutical disaster. It seemed like a good idea to share them, and some of them or just downright scary.<\/p>\n

#1\u00a0According to the New York Times,\u00a0more than 30 million Americans\u00a0are currently taking antidepressants.<\/p>\n

#2\u00a0The rate of antidepressant use among middle aged women is far higher than for the population as a whole.\u00a0 At this point,\u00a0one out of every four women in their 40s and 50s\u00a0is taking an antidepressant medication.<\/p>\n

#3\u00a0Americans account for about five percent of the global population, but we buy\u00a0more than 50 percent\u00a0of the pharmaceutical drugs.<\/p>\n

#4\u00a0Americans also consume a whopping\u00a080 percent\u00a0of all prescription painkillers.<\/p>\n

#5\u00a0It is hard to believe, but doctors in the United States write\u00a0259 million prescriptions\u00a0for painkillers each year.\u00a0 Prescription painkillers are some of the most addictive legal drugs, and our doctors areserving as enablers for millions up0n millions of Americans that find themselves hooked on drugs that they cannot kick.<\/p>\n

#6\u00a0Overall, pharmaceutical drug use in America is at an all-time high.\u00a0 According to a study conducted by the Mayo Clinic, nearly\u00a070 percent\u00a0of all Americans are on at least one prescription drug, and 20 percent of all Americans are on at least five prescription drugs.<\/p>\n

#7\u00a0According to the CDC, approximately\u00a09 out of every 10\u00a0Americans that are at least 60 years old say that they have taken at least one prescription drug within the last month.<\/p>\n

#8\u00a0In 2010, the average teen in the United States was taking\u00a01.2 central nervous system drugs.\u00a0 Those are the kinds of drugs which treat conditions such as ADHD and depression.<\/p>\n

#9\u00a0A very disturbing Government Accountability Office report found that\u00a0approximately one-third\u00a0of all foster children in the United States are on at least one psychiatric drug.<\/p>\n

#10\u00a0An astounding\u00a095 percent\u00a0of the \u201cexperimental medicines\u201d that the pharmaceutical industry produces are found not to be safe and are never approved.\u00a0 Of the remaining 5 percent that are approved, we often do not find out that they are deadly to us until decades later.<\/p>\n

#11\u00a0One study discovered that mothers that took antidepressants during pregnancy were\u00a0four times more likely\u00a0to have a baby that developed an autism spectrum disorder.<\/p>\n

#12\u00a0It has been estimated that prescription drugs kill\u00a0approximately 200,000 people\u00a0in the United States every single year.<\/p>\n

#13\u00a0An American dies from an unintentional prescription drug overdose\u00a0every 19 minutes.\u00a0 According to\u00a0Dr. Sanjay Gupta, accidental prescription drug overdose is \u201cthe leading cause of acutepreventable death for Americans\u201d.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

#14\u00a0In the United States today, prescription painkillers kill more Americans\u00a0than heroin and cocaine combined.<\/p>\n

#15\u00a0According to the CDC,\u00a0approximately three quarters of a million people a year\u00a0are rushed to emergency rooms in the United States\u00a0because of adverse reactions to pharmaceutical drugs.<\/p>\n

#16\u00a0The number of prescription drug overdose deaths in the United States is\u00a0five times higher\u00a0than it was back in 1980.<\/p>\n

#17\u00a0A survey conducted for the National Institute on Drug Abuse found that more than\u00a015 percent\u00a0of all U.S. high school seniors\u00a0abuse prescription drugs.<\/p>\n

#18\u00a0More than 26 million women over the age of 25 say that they are \u201cusing prescription medications for unintended uses\u201c.<\/p>\n

#19\u00a0If all of these antidepressants are helping, then why are more Americans killing themselves?\u00a0 The suicide rate for Americans between the ages of 35 and 64 increased\u00a0by nearly 30 percent\u00a0between 1999 and 2010.\u00a0 The number of Americans that die by suicide is now greater than the number of Americans that die as a result of car accidents every year.<\/p>\n

#20\u00a0Antidepressant use has been linked to mass shootings in America\u00a0over and over and over again, and yet the mainstream media is eerily quiet about this. Is it because they don\u2019t want to threaten one of their greatest sources of advertising revenue?<\/p>\n

#21\u00a0The amount of money that the pharmaceutical industry is raking in is astronomical.\u00a0 It has been reported that Americans spent\u00a0more than 280 billion dollars\u00a0on prescription drugs during 2013.<\/p>\n

These facts that were presented are American ones, but there is no doubt that a number of these also apply to the Canadian pharmaceutical business and in previous articles we’ve discussed the growing problem of prescription medications in Canada. Something needs to be done. Why are doctors issuing so many of these prescriptions when they must know that they are harming their patients? Of course it can’t just be the doctors’ faults, especially when North American physicians are now teaming up with a wide variety of government departments as well as community advocates and so on to help prevent drug abuse, but there must be someone to lay the blame on. But it’s also possible that everyone involved in the giant mess of pharmaceuticals and legal medications share the blame, from patient to doctor to the pharmaceutical industry itself. One thing is for sure though, the drug companies do help save millions of lives, but they aren’t a charity, and they are in business to make money, even if it means people get addicted to their product.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

VIA:GLOBALRESEARCH<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The drug problem in North America is at it’s breaking point. Illegal drugs like heroin are devastating communities, towns and cities across the US and Canada. This article, however, is not about dangerous street drugs. It’s about the rampant over-prescribing practices in North America and not just for the drugs you may be thinking of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,28,34,22,57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prescription-drugs","category-research","category-scientific-study","category-substance-abuse","category-trends"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sobriety.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sobriety.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sobriety.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sobriety.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sobriety.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sobriety.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1136\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sobriety.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sobriety.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sobriety.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}