Prescription Drug Epidemic - Psychiatrists 'Pushers'

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"Our nation is in the throes of an epidemic of controlled prescription drug abuse and addiction," said Joseph A. Califano, Jr., CASA's chairman and president and former U.S. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare. "While America has been congratulating itself in recent years on curbing increases in alcohol and illicit drug abuse, and in the decline in teen smoking, abuse of prescription drugs has been stealthily, but sharply, rising."

It would appear that something is wrong with the war on drugs highly touted by the United Nations and almost all its member states, especially the US. The target isn't right. In fact, prescription drugs quite legally produced by pharmaceutical companies seem to outsell the "illegal" variety by far. But then perhaps, there is something wrong with prohibition - period. Certainly prohibition seems to exacerbate the problem of drug connected criminality - or so say the experts. Prohibition is what makes drugs profitable.

Organized crime will fill the demand that cannot be legally filled - and since to do so is profitable, the bosses will find ways to "stimulate business" by hooking ever more souls to the most profitable drugs. Pushers do the dirty job.

Compare that with the epidemic of controlled prescription drug use CASA is denouncing. Here we have a different kind of prohibition - the suppression of alternatives to pharma's drugs. But we have pushers at work all the same: Psychiatrists push for pharmaceutical drugging. Psychiatric drug prescription algorithms have been put in place, financed by big pharma.

There is even a program to test every man, woman and especially the children in school for their need to undergo drugging at the hands of the state. It's called TeenScreen and is being pushed - always with pharma money and psychiatric backing. Psychiatrists are the pushers for pharma's addictive drugs. But everything is legal - it's got presidential approval.

Just what is the extent prescription drugs have legally replaced street drugs? It is amazing. Here is a comment on CASA's report by Vera Hassner Sharav of the ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION:

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“Our nation is in the throes of an epidemic of controlled prescription drug abuse and addiction,” said Joseph A. Califano, Jr., CASA’s chairman and president and former U.S. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare. “While America has been congratulating itself in recent years on curbing increases in alcohol and illicit drug abuse, and in the decline in teen smoking, abuse of prescription drugs has been stealthily, but sharply, rising."

A report by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia Universithy (CASA) about a survey of 979 physicians and 1,030 pharmacists from July 21 to October 31, 2004, provides shocking findings about the explosive abuse of addictive prescription drugs:

"From 1992 to 2003, abuse of controlled prescription drugs grew at a rate twice that of marijuana abuse; five times that of cocaine abuse; 60 times that of heroin abuse."

CASA notes: "The explosion in the prescription of addictive opioids, depressants and stimulants has, for many children, made their parents’ medicine cabinet a greater temptation and threat than the illegal street drug dealer."

What the CASA report avoids is holding the real culprits of the epidemic accountable:

This health epidemic is a consequence of the irresponsible prescribing of controlled prescription drugs which have been widely advertised. CASA acknowledges that the problem was NOT caused by illicit street junkies, but the report fails to nail the obvious culprits who enticed the public -- including impressionable children -- to take drugs that promised to make them feel better than ever. This drug epidemic is the consequence of a physician-pharmaceutical orchestrated crime.

The medical / psychiatric community and its professional organizations -- especially the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the National Institute of Mental Health. The AMA and APA are even now attempting to persuade the FDA to withdraw the newly required label warnings about the risks posed by antidepressants and stimulant drugs.

Physicians and medical institutions that have grown wealthy from their collaboration with the pharmaceutical industry have created a drug addiction epidemic that puts the community's safety at risk.

Perfectly healthy children, teenagers, pregnant women have become victims of professional drug pushers who are licensed by the government.

These same partners in crime have a major financial investment in ensuring a seamless steady flow of new customers for the most expensive psychotropic drugs. To accomplish that goal, they have embarked on a massive hunting expedition to ferret out undetected mental health problems in children -- on the basis of a flawed questionnaire whose purpose was designed to expand the client base. TeenScreen has been unleashed in schools across America -- although no such diagnostic method has ever been validated.

Nevertheless, TeenScreen has the seal of approval of state mental health offices and the President's New Freedom Commission report -- a commission that was riddled with conflicts of interest. Indeed, the NFC promoted the most controversial psychotropic drug prescribing guide -- TMAP (Texas Medication Algorithm Project) -- to ensure that the most expensive drugs whose hazardous effects are only now being revealed to the public would be prescribed. 

Contrary to its claims that TeenScreen "does not receive financial support from and is not affiliated with any pharmaceutical companiess" the Tennesse State Department of Mental Health / Mental Retardation acknowledges in an official publication that: "TeenScreen was funded through grants from AdvoCare and Eli Lilly."

Vera Hassner Sharav
212-595-8974
veracare@ahrp.org

“CASA remains the only national organization that brings together all the professional disciplines needed to combat abuse of all substances in all sectors of society.”

- Joseph A. Califano, Jr., CASA Chairman and President     

MORE THAN 15 MILLION AMERICANS ABUSE OPIOIDS, DEPRESSANTS, STIMULANTS
TEEN ABUSE TRIPLES IN 10 YEARS 
   
NEW CASA REPORT: CONTROLLED PRESCRIPTION DRUG ABUSE AT EPIDEMIC LEVEL

WASHINGTON, July 7, 2005 – The number of Americans who abuse controlled prescription drugs has nearly doubled from 7.8 million to 15.1 million from 1992 to 2003 and abuse among teens has more than tripled during that time, according to a new report by The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University.

Under the Counter: The Diversion and Abuse of Controlled Prescription Drugs in the U.S., a 214-page CASA report detailing the findings of an exhaustive three-year study of prescription opioids (e.g., OxyContin, Vicodin), central nervous system (CNS) depressants (e.g., Valium, Xanax) and CNS stimulants (e.g., Ritalin, Adderall), found that from 1992 to 2003, while the U.S. population increased 14 percent, the number of 12 to 17 year olds who abused controlled prescription drugs jumped 212 percent and the number of adults 18 and older abusing such drugs climbed 81 percent.

The 15.1 million Americans abusing controlled prescription drugs exceed the combined number abusing cocaine (5.9 million), hallucinogens (4.0 million), inhalants (2.1 million) and heroin (.3 million).  

“Our nation is in the throes of an epidemic of controlled prescription drug abuse and addiction,” said Joseph A. Califano, Jr., CASA’s chairman and president and former U.S. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare. “While America has been congratulating itself in recent years on curbing increases in alcohol and illicit drug abuse, and in the decline in teen smoking, abuse of prescription drugs has been stealthily, but sharply, rising.”

Among the report’s major findings:

· From 1992 to 2002, prescriptions written for controlled drugs increased more than 150 percent, almost 12 times the rate of increase in population and almost three times the rate of increase in prescriptions written for all other drugs.

· From 1992 to 2003, the number of people abusing controlled prescription drugs increased seven times faster than the increase in the U.S. population.

· From 1992 to 2003, abuse of controlled prescription drugs grew at a rate twice that of marijuana abuse; five times that of cocaine abuse; 60 times that of heroin abuse.

· From 1992 to 2000 –

- The number of new opioid abusers grew by 225 percent; new tranquilizer abusers, by 150 percent; new sedative abusers, by more than 125 percent; new stimulant abusers, by more than 170 percent.

- The increase in new abusers 12 to 17 years old was far greater than among adults (four times greater for opioids; three times for tranquilizers and sedatives; two and one-half times for stimulants).

· From 1992 to 2002, new abuse of prescription opioids among 12 to 17 year olds was up an astounding 542 percent, more than four times the rate of increase among adults.

· In 2003, 2.3 million 12 to 17 year olds (nearly one in 10) abused at least one controlled prescription drug; for 83 percent of them, the drug was opioids.

· In 2003, among 12 to 17 year olds, girls were likelier than boys to abuse controlled prescription drugs (10.1 percent of girls vs. 8.6 percent of boys).

· Between 1991 and 2003, rates of lifetime steroid abuse among high school students increased 126 percent, with abuse among girls up by nearly 350 percent, compared to 66 percent among boys. 

· Teens who abuse controlled prescription drugs are twice as likely to use alcohol, five times likelier to use marijuana, 12 times likelier to use heroin, 15 times likelier to use Ecstasy and 21 times likelier to use cocaine, compared to teens who do not abuse such drugs.

Many Sources of Diversion

Controlled prescription drugs can be diverted from their lawful medical purpose to illicit use from manufacturing facilities, distributors, warehouses, pharmacies, hospitals, practitioners’ offices and patients’ medicine cabinets. In CASA’s unique national surveys conducted in 2004, most physicians (59.1 percent) and pharmacists (51.8 percent) blame patients, who can obtain controlled prescription drugs by faking symptoms treated with opioids, depressants and stimulants, visiting a number of doctors to obtain prescriptions from each (doctor shopping), and altering prescriptions. For children, access to controlled prescription drugs for the purpose of diversion can be as close as a household medicine cabinet. 

“The explosion in the prescription of addictive opioids, depressants and stimulants has, for many children, made their parents’ medicine cabinet a greater temptation and threat than the illegal street drug dealer. Parents who do not want to