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Jewish World Review July 18, 2005 / 11 Taamuz, 5765 Prescription for all our problems By Ruben Navarrette Jr.
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Welcome to the real drug war. And the front line may be as near as your medicine cabinet.
A new study by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse finds that the number of Americans who abuse prescription drugs nearly doubled in just over a decade — from 7.8 million in 1992 to 15.1 million in 2003. That more recent figure exceeds the number of Americans estimated to be abusing cocaine, hallucinogens, inhalants and heroin — combined.
You might be shocked to hear that. But something tells me that Tom Cruise isn't so surprised. You'll recall that the movie star recently got into a rhetorical shoving match with, well, just about everyone over whether prescription drugs should be used to treat mental disorders.
A recent column on the subject brought a tremendous reaction from readers, including many parents determined to keep their kids off Ritalin and other medications.
It also brought a gentle scolding from a child psychologist who, in a lengthy phone conversation, insisted that the media missed the real story. She said that while the Tom Cruise story was about — or rather had become about — whether psychiatrists (and these days, increasingly also psychologists) overprescribe drugs, mental health professionals were getting a bad rap.
It's not that there isn't prescription abuse going on, she said. It's just that psychiatrists and psychologists aren't the ones who are doing most of the abusing.
It is, she said, a well-known fact within the medical profession that general practitioners, family doctors and pediatricians are really quick on the draw when it comes to writing prescriptions.
That makes sense. These are the entry points into the health care system, where people first go when they suspect something is wrong. And, she said, the problem is that these kinds of doctors usually don't have the training or expertise to diagnose conditions such as attention-deficit disorder. So you end up with a lot of kids being put on drugs when they may not really need them.
But even that isn't the real story, she said. The real story is that we wouldn't have so many prescription drugs if so many people in our society weren't so darn eager to take them — and, in some cases, even ask for them by name, often after seeing them advertised in television commercials.
That's the key. Like so many other things that leave Americans feeling perplexed and helpless — from illegal immigration to our society's declining moral values to the challenges that come with raising children — this is one of those areas where Americans could easily find the culprit if only they would look in the mirror.
For most of the people who wrote me, the easy way out was to blame doctors or the pharmaceutical companies who reap huge profits from producing the drugs that wind up in so many American homes.
I'll buy that. I've been there. Who hasn't? I remember a former employer who, after noticing that I had a cold and a cough, urged me to go to the doctor and specifically ask for a kind of extra-strength antibiotic known to clear up such things in a few days. My boss wanted me back at work as soon as possible. So I went to my doctor and did as she suggested.
The convenience factor also shows up with regard to Ritalin. A lot of parents would simply rather give their kids pills every day than spend the time and money to schedule therapy sessions with the right specialist who could accurately diagnose and treat the problem.
And whose fault is that? Not the doctors and the drug companies. Oh, they may profit — perhaps even to an obscene degree — from a situation like this. But most of the blame goes to the parents and to other ordinary Americans with all manner of ailments who, rather than go to the trouble of getting real help, try to find relief from a little orange bottle.
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Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||
