National Initiative

By Author: Steven Johnson
Total Articles: 490
Comment this article

It's a strange world record to hold but, on reflection, perhaps not so surprising for the country with the highest consumer spending per head. We consume more medication than anyone else. And that's a record based solely on the number of prescriptions written. If we were to add in the millions of other pills bought through the online pharmacies, the winning margin would be the country mile. One of the consequences of this is there is an epidemic of prescription drug abuse. Why? Well, the reason among the young is easy to explain. They have grown up surrounded by ads for all the major prescription drugs. From the outset, they have been sold the idea that all these drugs are safe. They have, after all, been approved by the FDA and, so they reason, the government would never let anything out on to the market that was going to harm people. Thus, it's the easiest thing in the world to open a bottle or pop a blister, and wash down any of the now standard combinations of pills. As for the Boomers. . . they grew up in a soft drugs culture and the only effect of the extra policing has been to drive them more into prescription drugs. ...
... There's less hassle to getting high that way. Then come their children who grew up in homes where drug-taking was a normal part of life.

All of which brings us to the national event the DEA is calling the National Take Back Initiative (a real failure of big government to come up with a snappy acronym and one more reason to withhold your taxes). At present, the majority of children and younger teens get their drugs from their parents' and friends' home medicine cabinets. The DEA hopes parents will want to protect their children and hand in all the old and unused drugs in their possession. In a survey held in 2008, more than 6 million Americans over the age of 12 admitted abusing prescription drugs in the month before the poll. Allowing for respondents being less than honest, this fits in with another uncomfortable statistic. More Americans die of accidental poisonings and overdoses from prescription drugs than from street drugs.

The death of celebrities like Heath Ledger from cocktails including Xanax should help bring home the message of the need for more care. Why not flush these drugs down the toilet? As it is, the water treatment plants struggle to extract safe drinking water from our lakes and rivers. The more polluted they are with drugs, the greater the risk we will all be consuming a mass of drugs every time we drink from the faucet. Although the DEA program is run by local police forces, the collection process is anonymous. There are no questions asked. All we want is for the mass of unused drugs like Xanax to be disposed of safely. That way, we get a better, less polluted environment and there's less abuse in our homes and communities. During the month of September 2010, you can check with the DEA web site to find out where your nearest hand-in point is located.