What makes the USA and New Zealand unique in the world? If you answered that they are the only countries in the world that allow pharmaceutical companies to run TV ads for their drugs, go to the head of the class!
We oldies will vividly recall May 19, 1983, when the Boots Pharmaceutical company aired the first TV ad in the USA for their pain reliever Rufin, and the legal battles have been going on with drug companies and the American Medical Association ever since.
The AMA, the largest doctors’ group in the United States, wants to stop direct-to-consumer advertising for prescription drugs in the belief that the ads encourage patients to seek medicines unnecessarily.
If there is anything that will bring this country down it is the craving our society has for drugs, both legal and illegal. Just watch the news or read a newspaper and you will see where people are dying every day from buying and ingesting drugs laced with fentanyl.
Excuse me, but do these people not have access to TV or the internet where they would be flooded with stories every day about the dangers of buying or using drugs that were not prescribed to YOU by a doctor and purchased at a legitimate pharmacy?
We aren’t talking about someone sneaking a drug into your food or drink without your knowledge or giving drug-laced snacks to kids. We’re talking about adults, otherwise mentally capable people, intentionally taking this stuff knowing full well that one pill could kill them.
People in this country worry about Russia, China, Muslim fanatic jihadists, violent gangs and COVID, but they don’t seem the least bit concerned about drug deaths. Just last year (!) fentanyl overdoses killed nearly 79,000 Americans in the age group between 18 and 45.
To put that into some type of perspective, during the 20-year war in Afghanistan and the almost-as-long two wars in Iraq, we had a total of 5,669 U.S. troops killed. My handy dandy calculator tells me that fentanyl deaths in one year were approximately 14 times more than two 20-year wars!
You can build as many walls on the borders as you want to, but as long as the people in this country have their voracious appetite for drugs, you are NEVER going to stop the flow. And that’s the sad fact of our Addicted Nation.
Rick Barker
Valencia
