Legal Drug Industry Continues to Fool Teens
Ferndale, WA (PRWEB) May 21, 2006
The rise and fall of teenage drug use has been tracked by several organizations over the last couple of decades, and the most recent study from the Partnership for a Drug-Free America shows that prescription drug abuse continues to pervade society.
The Partnership Attitude Tracking Study, now in its 18th year, showed that four and a half million teenagers (19 percent) report abusing prescription medications to get high. This includes narcotics such as Vicodin and Oxycontin as well as amphetamines like Ritalin and Adderall. The steady rise of prescription drug abuse over the years has come to a point where teenagers are now more likely to abuse legal drugs than illegal ones like cocaine, crack, ecstasy and methamphetamine.
In a Partnership release announcing the results of the study, CEO Steve Pasierb said, “We have a situation where a widespread and dangerous teen behavior has become normalized and has found its way into our homes.”
Released on May 16th in Washington, D.C., the Partnership study surveyed more than 7,300 teenagers in grades 7-12, and found that 9.4 million of them (40 percent) felt that prescription drugs are “much safer” than illegal drugs. Additional findings showed that 29 percent of teenagers think that painkillers are not addictive.
Dr. Michael Maves of the American Medical Association acknowledged that prescription drugs, “…can be every bit as dangerous as illegal street drugs.”
The staggering statistics are a result of the major marketing and lobbying campaign by pharmaceutical companies in recent years. The Center for Public Integrity reports that the pharmaceutical and health products industry has spent more than 0 million in federal lobbying and campaign donations in just a seven-year period, and that no other industry has spent more money to sway public policy in that period.
The advertising and lobbying dollars have opened the flood gates through direct-to-consumer marketing, courting of medical school students, and a more relaxed relationship with the Food and Drug Administration. Evidence of this can be found by looking at the sheer number of increased warning labels for existing medications and some drugs being pulled from the market, after billions in profits. The average gross revenue for the top twenty pharmaceutical companies in 2004 was around billion.
“People are being fooled every day into thinking that prescription drugs are generally safe,” says Lucas A Catton, President of the Foundation for Social Improvement and director of the international Drug-Free Alliance. “Maybe the fact that these drugs are ruining the lives of so many teenagers will help adults wake up to see what is happening around them, but it shouldn’t have had to come to this point.”
Catton also says the recent additional findings about the dangers of antidepressants as well as the link between psychiatrist authors of the Diagnostic and Statistics Manual (DSM-IV) and pharmaceutical companies are more indicators that a corrupt system must be changed.
The Drug-Free Alliance is a strong advocate for healthier living and supports groups and individuals dedicated to making society free from the onslaught of damaging drugs. For more information or to join the Alliance log on to www.drug-freealliance.org.
To read the entire findings of the Partnership study visit www.drugfree.org.
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