We all have heard how prescription drugs are overtaking other drugs (cocaine, heroine, etc.) as the most dangerous drugs that our youth are taking…but our government isn’t just sitting on the side for this one; they are actually enabling the problem!
Anderson Cooper just did a segment on this situation and I realized how bad of a situation it is. Anyone, just by doing a google or a yahoo search, can find an online “pharmacy” where they can sort through almost any prescription drug. AC’s reporters posed as an adult and got Prozac as well as other addicting prescription drugs, but this isn’t the most shocking case. One of the reporters posed as a 13 year old boy, and bought almost $500 worth of Soma, which is just as addictive and dangerous as Oxycodone, which is part of the Drug Enforcement Administrations controlled substance list.
Not all online pharmacies are illegal, but you have to have a face-to-face meeting before having prescription drugs ordered or sent online. These companies that were shown on the show were all illegal (linepharmacy.com got shut down a couple days after the report). So the question is, why isn’t our government doing anything about this? When Congressmen were asked, they were told to go talk to the DEA. When they went to the DEA, they were sent to the Food and Drug Administration department, who said that this wasn’t their area. Sounds like an effective government if you ask me…
So who is at fault here? Obviously, the fake pharmacies are at fault because they are knowingly breaking the law in order to make a buck off of the products. But, if you do a Google search or a Yahoo search for online drugs, or something similar, you will get sponsored ads on the side of the screen for these companies. Google/Yahoo put these ads here because the pharmacies are paying them to advertise on the search engine. I think that these multi-billion dollars could fork over a couple of dollars in order to make sure that the websites they are sponsoring are legitimate, legal businesses. If a child does a search and sees that these websites are sponsored by google, they are going to believe that they are good websites. Some definite blame has to go to these big businesses for what they are doing to the country.
However, I think that the government has a huge role in this problem. Why would you knowingly look past a problem that is having drastic effects on our nation’s youth? Prescription drugs are abused more than cocaine and heroine combined, and yet our country is spending billions of dollars in the “War on Drugs” without reimbursement for their payments. Let’s change our focus to the current problem. What was a huge problem 30 years ago when the “war” was started is not the biggest deal now. The first step towards a solution is to put some government agency in charge of the problem. You can’t fight a war without any soldiers. Then we need to educate our youth about the problems associated with prescription drug abuse. Then we need to tackle these online pharmacies one by one until they are out of business.
Thanks for reading and please comment/rate.
The same goes true for adults. People can get addicted. I wonder sometimes why celebs do not have drugs in their names or etc
because people will rat on them.
Published Author and Poet
Teacher Education Student.
I think the government is big enough. The DEA should be the agency in charge. The problem is they do not care as much about the legal/abused drugs as they are the illegal drugs and their cartels.
What they need to do is hire more people and set up a task force to tackle these problem pharmacies. We could help by researching and reporting the bad ones we find ourselves.
Thanks for letting me know how to get my drug abuse fix online.
~T
All truths are easy to understand once discovered; The point is to discover them ~Galileo