by Charlene Smith
Americans addicted to opioid painkillers have all but killed the cocaine trade as the citizens of the United States, just four percent of the world’s population, consume half the global output of prescription drugs. And 80 percent of its painkillers.
Marijuana is no longer the gateway drug for teens - it is prescription drugs.
Cocaine is no longer the party thrill - it is prescription drugs.
And for kids who are persuaded by parents and teachers that they can’t study or concentrate appropriately without Ritalin, they switch to Adderall at college when writing papers – both drugs are ranked as narcotic as cocaine by the Drug Enforcement Administration, and both are cardio-toxic, which means they can cause potentially lethal heart problems.
The profile of prescription drug addicts is different to that of street addicts – your classic prescription drug addict is a white male aged 30 to 60. He is educated, employed, and probably a family man. His wife and children also probably use a higher ratio of prescription drugs than necessary. And the more prescription drugs children are exposed to as they grow up, the more likely they will become addicted. Prescription drugs and not marijuana are the new gateway drugs to addiction and hard-core illegal drugs like heroin, the granddaddy of opioids.
And talking of senior citizens, grandma or grandpa also probably consume 10, 15, 20 or more drugs a day as globally the most rapidly growing age group is that aged 80 and older – with the assumption, not always correct, that as they age they need more and more drugs to function.[i]
Prescription drug addiction is not confined to the U.S., Britain, Australia and Canada are all reporting alarming increases in prescription drug consumption and addiction, but the problem is worst here.
Why are so many Americans in such pain[ii], so troubled and finding it so difficult to cope with life? One of the reasons may be that, according to research from Harvard economists and others, this country has become one of the most over-worked nations in the world. Americans tend to work longer hours than the global norm with less labor protection. American productivity ranks among the top three in the world but the excessive consumption of pharmaceutical products to sleep, perform (at school, college, work and in bed) and retain a calm disposition would suggest that high rates of workplace performance are achieved at a cost that is disabling the country.
Dr. David Martin head of the Washington-based Drug and Alcohol Testing Industry Association receives daily reports of drug test results taken of employees in corporations and federal institutions. He says[iii] the U.S.A. is “facing a tsunami of severely addicted people.” He also gets to see drug test results for children and comments: “We are sacrificing a generation of children. We give them pills that look like vitamins. When I was growing up about six percent of 12-year-olds had some exposure to drugs, now over 60 percent are exposed to some form of drug abuse. I can’t think of a scarier science fiction plot … ”
What the United States needs to get out of the global recession is not for Americans to work harder – you can’t keep flaying a dying horse – it is for legislators and corporate bosses to become smarter about a risk that is rising up behind them like a Stealth bomber. While everyone has their faces to the balance sheets, they’re ignoring the fact that the American worker can no longer cope, whether on the trading floor or on the manufacturing line. They’re exhausted and are consuming chemicals in such high quantities that it is starting to paralyze innovation (the U.S. now ranks bottom in a ranking of 40 nations [iv]); destroy educational outcomes (U.S. educational scores are at record lows[v]) and collapse the health system.
[i] World Population Ageing 1950 to 2050, Population Division, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, United Nations, 2002: “In the more developed regions, the proportion of older persons already exceeds that of children, and by 2050 it is expected to be double that of children.”
[ii] More than 33 million Americans, age 12 and older, misused extended-release and long-acting opioids during 2007—up from 29 million just five years earlier. In 2006, nearly 50,000 emergency room visits were related to opioids, by 2009 that figure had leapt to 1,2 million emergency room admissions. (Federal Drug Administration, April 2011)
[iii] Telephone interview with Dr. Martin, June 7, 2011
[iv] GPS Innovation Special, Fareed Zakaria, CNN, June 13, 2011
[v] The three-yearly Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) report, which compares the knowledge and skills of 15-year-olds in 70 countries around the world, ranked the United States 14th out of 34 OECD countries for reading skills, 17th for science and a below-average 25th for mathematics, US Falls in World Education Rated Average, Huffington Post, July 12, 2010.
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