CHICAGO (Reuters) – Many more Americans have been using prescription drugs to treat mental illness since 1996, in part because of expanded insurance coverage and greater familiarity with the drugs among primary care doctors, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.

Really?  It wouldn’t have anything to do with the ubiquitous “ask your prescriber about new prescription Dammitol” advertisements on TV?

They said 73 percent more adults and 50 percent more children are using drugs to treat mental illness than in 1996.

Among adults over 65, use of so-called psychotropic drugs — which include antidepressants, antipsychotics and Alzheimer’s medicines — doubled between 1996 and 2006.

Here are some other interesting stats from that time period:

• In 1989, drug companies spent $12 million on direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising.  By 2007 the figure reached $3.7 billion.
• DTC advertising began in 1983, but advertising was restricted only to the drug’s brand name and an “ask your doctor” pitch.  They could not describe what the drug would treat or how it would help a patient.
• In 1997, the FDA relaxed rules on prescription drug advertising to allow the ads we see now, where shiny happy people use prescription Dammitol, pretty music plays and birds chirp, and in the last ten seconds a muted monotone sped-up voice-over tells you all the side effects Dammitol can cause.
• 70% of all DTC advertising is television advertising, and 29% of all network news advertising revenue comes from pharmaceutical ads.
• The average number of prescriptions per person in the United States increased from 7.3 in 1992 to 14.3 in 2006.

“What we generally find is there has been an increase in access to care for all populations,” said Sherry Glied of Columbia University in New York, whose study appears in the journal Health Affairs.

Glied said expanded drug coverage under Medicare, the federal insurance program for the elderly, and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program for poor children, helped make such drugs more affordable.

The study found the number of children diagnosed and treated for mental health conditions by their primary care doctor doubled between 1996 and 2006.

Sure, that could be a part of the increase, but you don’t double the prescriptions-per-person and see 50%, 75%, and 100% rise in psychtropic drug use among children, adults, and seniors, respectively, in just over a decade because government programs made those drugs more affordable for children and the elderly.

In his book, Death by Prescription, Ray D. Strand describes our “self-medicated society” and how these pharmaceutical ads turn the patient into a drug seeker and the doctor into a dealer:

“Surveys reported in our medical literature reveal that when a patient comes into a doctor’s office and requests a specific drug that he has seen advertised in the media, the doctor writes the exact prescription the patient requested more than 70 percent of the time!”

So, let’s say that a consumer who has been feeling a little sad lately sees a commercial for the antidepressant drug Zoloft. The commercial demonstrates the symptoms for depression and the consumer identifies with them. Suddenly, he or she thinks, “I’m not just sad. I’m depressed, which is a ‘medical condition that can be treated by the prescription drug Zoloft.’” With this in mind, the consumer goes to a medical doctor and says, “I’ve been really depressed a lot lately. I’ve been [the consumer recites the depression symptoms listed in the Zoloft commercial]. I think I need Zoloft.” So, according to Strand, there’s a 70 percent chance the doctor will prescribe Zoloft, the exact prescription the consumer requested. That’s how pharmaceutical commercials really work. They directly influence consumer behavior, yet drug companies claim they only “educate” patients, but don’t persuade them to do anything.

It’s not just the patients that Big Pharma is seducing, either.  15 to 20 percent of the American Psychological Association’s (APA) income comes from pharmaceutical advertisements in its journals.  Pfizer alone has 4500 people in its sales force, which directly market these drugs to doctors through special promotions and free samples.  And while Big Pharma spends $3.7 billion to influence you, they spend almost twice that ($6.7 billion) advertising to doctors through these sales forces and in professional journals.

And it works.  $10.4 billion in total advertising is a small price to pay to reap the $227.5 billion spent on prescription drugs in 2007.  Comparing the cost of the raw ingredients vs. the retail cost to consumers, the markups on Paxil, Zoloft, Celebrex, Prozac, and Xanax are 2,898%, 11,821%, 21,712%, 224,973%, 569,958%, respectively.  The pharmaceutical industry is the third most profitable industry in America, according to Fortune Magazine (trailing only communications and internet industries for return-on-investment), with 2008 profits of 19.3% of revenues.  The profits of the three largest pharmaceutical companies were $12.9, $8.1, and $4.8 billion in 2008, respectively.

When you know these facts, you begin to understand the monumental task of legalizing marijuana in this country.  How far would that $227.5 billion prescription drug spending drop if people had legal access to marijuana?  I’ve already talked to many medical marijuana patients who report being able to kick 50% to 75% of their need for opioid painkillers thanks to cannabis.  Marijuana works better for some people for anxiety and depression than Paxil, Zoloft, Celebrex, Prozac, and Xanax, and you can grow it in your yard.  That little weed can replace a whole lotta pills that have nasty side effects like constipation, nausea, erectile disfunction, and so forth (for which, of course, they’ll write you another prescription).  And it makes you happy, hungry, and sexy, too!

So why would the AMA or APA want to support medical marijuana and anger the Big Pharma that keeps their journals funded?  Why would network television want to report positively on medical marijuana and anger the Big Pharma that keeps their news divisions funded?  Why would some doctors want to support medical marijuana and mess up the freebies they’re getting from Big Pharma?

The real reason marijuana is illegal has nothing to do with how it effects you or society, it’s how it effects business.

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Legal Drugs Kill Far More Than Illegal, Florida Says – NYTimes.com
An analysis of autopsies in 2007 released this week by the Florida Medical Examiners Commission found that the rate of deaths caused by prescription drugs was three times the rate of deaths caused by all illicit drugs combined.

Law enforcement officials said that the shift toward prescription-drug abuse, which began here about eight years ago, showed no sign of letting up and that the state must do more to control it.

The report’s findings track with similar studies by the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, which has found that roughly seven million Americans are abusing prescription drugs. If accurate, that would be an increase of 80 percent in six years and more than the total abusing cocaine, heroin, hallucinogens, Ecstasy and inhalants.

The Florida report analyzed 168,900 deaths statewide. Cocaine, heroin and all methamphetamines caused 989 deaths, it found, while legal opioids — strong painkillers in brand-name drugs like Vicodin and OxyContin — caused 2,328.

Drugs with benzodiazepine, mainly depressants like Valium and Xanax, led to 743 deaths. Alcohol was the most commonly occurring drug, appearing in the bodies of 4,179 of the dead and judged the cause of death of 466 — fewer than cocaine (843) but more than methamphetamine (25) and marijuana (0).

The study also found that while the number of people who died with heroin in their bodies increased 14 percent in 2007, to 110, deaths related to the opioid oxycodone increased 36 percent, to 1,253.

And yet, Floridians can go to their doctor and get a prescription for the opioids or benzodiazepenes that killed more Floridians in 2007 than died in the September 11th attacks.  Floridians can walk down to their local tavern and consume the alcohol that killed more Floridians than soldiers who have died in Iraq.  But that little green plant that didn’t kill any Floridians is still prohibited, even for the desperately sick and disabled.

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AMNews: Editorial – March 24/31, 2008. Question for patients: What’s in your medicine chest? … American Medical News
Prescription meds have become drugs of choice for abusers, young and old. According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, nearly one in 10 high school seniors admits to abusing pain medicines.

Moreover, Office of National Drug Control Policy data indicate that each day an estimated 2,500 young people ages 12 to 17 abuse such medications for the first time. More teens abuse prescription drugs than any illicit drug, except marijuana. They report mixing these meds together or with over-the-counter pills, cough syrups or alcohol. The result can be respiratory failure or even death. Related emergency department visits, for instance, increased 21% from 2004 to 2005. Still, 40% of teens and an almost equal number of parents think abusing prescription pain killers is safer than abusing street drugs.

But the problem reaches well beyond the teen years.An estimated 7 million Americans by the DEA’s count abused prescription drugs in 2005 — more than the number abusing cocaine, heroin, hallucinogens, ecstasy and inhalants combined. That number was just 3.8 million in 2000. Misuse of painkillers represents the biggest slice.

Among the reasons the problem is so pervasive is that access to the drugs is so easy. Although some abusers go to lengths such as doctor shopping or pharmacy theft to gain a fix, many abusers report that they get the meds from friends or relatives, or from raiding unused pills left forgotten in their homes.

This is a natural extension of giving mixed messages to our children about drugs in our society. We bombard them with ad campaigns to “Just Say No”; meanwhile they are also bombarded with beer and liquor and pharmaceutical advertisements. We tell them there is one class of drugs that are the bad drugs and another class that are the good drugs when some of the good ones are much more harmful than the bad ones. We need to inform our children that every drug – legal or illegal – can be abused and can be harmful, and to provide our kids with factual information about the risks of each.

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