insight

Rethinking America's drug habits

Fernando Meirelles' eagerly awaited second film, "The Constant Gardener" was released last week. I have not seen the film, so this is not a review. Rather, I would like to address one of the film's underlying bits of social commentary: the scourge of the world's giant pharmaceutical companies.

But first, to be fair, I will point out some of the benefits these dominant corporations provide us. Well, for one thing, I am using one of their quality ink pens to write this column. This one advertises Zyrtec (cetirizine HCl), Pfizer's answer to Schering-Plough's Claritin (loratadine). "Nervousness, excitability, convulsions, tremor, restlessness, dizziness, weakness, or insomnia may occur." Sound like an old song?

I have other pens: Rocephin (ceftriaxone sodium), Crestor (rosuvastatin calcium), Lipitor (atorvastatin calcium), and Avalide (irbesartan-hydrochlorothiazide). They are good pens, all of them, but the Zyrtec pen has the most comfortable grip, and so it is the one I currently carry.

I did an internship down in the Tech Center last spring for Jobson Education Group, a corporation that facilitates the continuing education seminars required of doctors and other healthcare professionals. The expenditures for these seminars are not paid by the doctors but by various global drug corporations. Though it is considered a conflict of interest for the drug corporations to advertise within the seminars (with pens, coffee mugs, et al), it is quite commonplace for a seminar instructor to applaud the greatness of some certain prescription drug.

So what's the big deal? Most of us are well aware that doctors are the legitimate pushers of lawful drugs. And drugs are a great boon to our civilization. Drugs help to alleviate our pain, stabilize our moods, regulate our circulatory systems and heat up our sex lives-and those are just the illicit drugs. Prescription drugs can also be beneficial.

I wonder, though, if the pharmaceutical corporations have our best interests in mind. It seems logical that the purpose of most prescription drugs is not to cure, but to suppress. If drugs cured what ails us, we would, of course, have no further use for the drug. And, well, that just isn't good for business.

And drugs are big business, no doubt about that. Whether they're dealing over-the-counter pain killers or cocaine by the kilo, the drug czars play for high stakes. Money drives the trade and our desire to numb ourselves assures its long success.

Drugs are the great equalizer. I don't mean to imply that drugs equalize us in a socio-economic sense. Why, the very division between prescription drug users and street drug users quells that argument. I mean we seem to want to repress any symptom that moves us beyond a comfortable mediocrity-whether it be too dark a sorrow or too frequent a sneezing.

When the mainstream media warns that drug use is rampant on our college campuses, they are referring only to illicit drug use. What about all the others? The Health Center at Auraria wrote an estimated 16,000 prescriptions in 2004, 14,891 of which were filled right here on campus. That's what I call a drug problem.

Now I'm not trying to be the next Tom Cruise-I'm not preaching Dianetics or anything-but perhaps we have become too dependent on drugs. When people are made to rely on some greater entity for their sustenance, that entity is able to control the people. History has shown us this, time and again. Take the Native Americans as an example. Once the white government was able to make them dependent on its rations, it had the Native-Americans beat.

Look at me. I have come to rely on the drug companies' swell ink pens to the point that no lightweight plastic pen will satisfy me. Oh, and I am no saint. I self-medicate from time to time, just to enhance the drudgery of existence.

So what does it matter if the drug companies finance the required education of our doctors and pharmacists? Surely they are concerned only for the health and well being of us all. If they're able to drum up a little business while they're looking out for our welfare, who can blame them? That's just good, honest capitalism.

Some would argue that, in fact, it is our system of free global market competition that spurs the drug trade. Without the promise of profit, what motivation would our corporate chemists have to put time and research into developing new and helpful drugs? Benevolence, I suppose, would not suffice.