Posts tagged - pharmaceuticals

Death and Thanksgiving

Posted on: November 03, 2023, in: , , ,

Image by Pepper Mint from Pixabay

It’s Monday, Nov. 25th at 2:12 pm., three days before Thanksgiving. I’m sitting with my computer at the kitchen table of an old friend who’s dying of bone cancer. On the table are tablets of hydromorphone and vials of liquid morphine carefully labeled and organized in glass dishes, one dish each two hours. His wife had to go to work, and she left me a set of instructions, a log for keeping track of what medication was administered and when. A large bottle of ibuprofen, some muscle relaxant and the wi-fi password.

I have work to do, but I am happy to be here, happy to help, since these people helped me when my wife was sick. Help is something that never dies, you never forget it, and it makes the whole thing worth living.

My friend is sleeping now, and unless he rings for something, I’ll wake him up at 3:30, give him any medications he may ask for, see if he wants food or needs to use the urine bottle. It’s windy outside with the trees blowing, shifting the pattern of shadows across the kitchen wall, and the wind whistles a bit, like some old movie about death. I’m trying to be philosophical about things, but it’s all pretty practical.

His wife says he’s ready to go, he’s tired of being in a sick body, trapped and medicated. He’s always been tough, never complaining. The hospice nurse left a few minutes ago. She was going to give him a bath, and he told me I had to pay to watch. I told his wife I could handle whatever came up, I once worked with handicapped people, changed adult diapers, and when my wife’s father was dying, I helped him use the urine bottle. My friend’s wife said that was good, she’d tell her husband so he wouldn’t be worried I’d be grossed out.

He hasn’t been eating and even though he is terribly thin, he still has a brightness about him, a sense of humor that the drugs haven’t dulled.

I know what’s coming, because I’ve been through the death of my wife. Even sick, even in a hospital bed with tubes and bright lines of respiration, blood pressure, heart rate, the person is still there, is still recognizable, is still with you no matter how diminished the state. But once they leave the body, that sick and painful flesh, something changes. The “with you” stops so suddenly it is stunning. And you are alone, albeit with friends and family, who cannot hope to substitute, but their very presence is evidence of love and friendship that brightens the emptiness of room, of bed, of heart.

Everyone dies, everyone loses those most loved, and that alone puts a terrible edge to life, but it is life, not death that matters. And when living, when having Thanksgiving dinner with friends and family, waste not the time on petty differences, politics, quibbles and quarrels. See those relatives – those vegans, vegetarians, those non-dairy gluten-free, organic-vegetable-only guests who don’t drink or drink too much, refuse to participate in the blessing, who say the turkey is too dry, the cranberries too tart, the stuffing not like their mother used to make, and is there any sugar at all in the pie? See them not for their faults or their politics or their religious biases and the annoyances they may bring to the table. See them instead as those beings who have shared your life, your table, your troubles, your friendship, who are traveling though time with you, on a journey somewhere we hope one day to understand.

I go to check on my friend. He is sleeping, I think, although I cannot see his chest rising and falling as it should. I will wake him in 15 minutes and he will either wake or not.

So what does this have to do with religion? Religion embodies our trust and faith in life without end, in a connection with truth that transcends the flesh, the travail and the temptations and the errors and the regrets of what we have done or haven’t done.

It’s 3:30, I’m going to check on my friend. Think of that at Thanksgiving and thank God for what you have for what you are and for your friends and family. Life is so much bigger than little upsets, embrace the wonder of those you have at the table, and give thanks for them. That’s the real meaning of Thanksgiving.

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Had Enough of BigPharma? Here’s More

Posted on: July 03, 2019, in: , , , , , , ,

Scott Gottlieb jumps from top FDA regulator to big bucks with Pfizer

Here we are in the middle of a BigPharma crisis — with people dying of opioid addiction, prices on pharmaceuticals skyrocketing, Congress raking in BigPharma campaign money and one-sixth of the American public taking useless  and dangerous antidepressants — and Scott Gottlieb, who served less than two years as FDA Commissioner and who resigned because he “wanted to spend more time with his family” has, predictably, two months later, passed through the “bigpharma revolving door” and joined Pfizer’s Board of Directors. He’ll now make the really big bucks and help the drugmaker speed new drugs through FDA approvals in the “good old boy” network.

Elizabeth Warren, one of the Democrats running for president, has called for him to resign. How about just making it illegal for the director of a federal regulatory agency to jump ship to a regulated industry or vice-versa? One of the perks of FDA employment, for example, is that drug companies often hire FDA staffers who approve their drugs.

Gottlieb will make a minimum of $335,000 a year if last year’s salaries hold, probably much more for his prize stash of FDA intelligence and inside information. Time to stop this stupidity and corruption! Block the revolving door and vote against anybody who takes big money from BigPharma!

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The Drug Addiction Crisis is Your Fault

Posted on: October 09, 2018, in: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Uncle Sam PixabayBy now, everyone is convinced we are in a drug-addiction crisis, and there’s plenty of blame to go around. Such as pharmaceutical companies that invented street drugs to begin with. Bayer once touted heroin for headaches,  Abbott Labs promoted methamphetamine as a remedy for alcoholism, Sandoz invented LSD, Merc invented morphine, distributed cocaine, and invented MDMA, and Purdue convinced doctors to prescribe OxyCodone for pain by assuring them that chances of addiction were very slim. And we can blame the doctors who ignored evidence to the contrary.

We can point the finger at pharmacies that order thousands more opioids than will be needed and fill prescriptions far above what makes sense. Pharmaceutical distributors that ignore huge orders for opioids from small pharmacies, and pressure legislators to pass bills that make the DEA impotent to enforce existing rules. DEA and FDA executives who jump ship to work for big pharma at huge increases in salary so they can help build strategies to circumvent legal restrictions on their activities. Psychiatrists and physicians who take money from big pharma and go on to promote medication assisted treatment not for detoxification, but as a permanent opioid-fueled future which will benefit pharmaceutical firms and their stockholders, who put addicts on naloxone and methadone which is much harder to detox than heroin, but has the advantage of diverting money from the street drug dealer to the pharmaceutical drug dealers and their investors. The pharmaceutical companies who invent drugs to block addiction to all but their own drugs, that block death on the street and then – aping the strategies of the most venial drug pushers – raise the prices multiple times, crying that “shortages exist, you’d better hurry!” Correctional institutions who embrace medication assisted treatment to medicate inmates instead of using incarceration as a period of drying out for later life, and did anyone mention investors in big pharma stocks because wow, riches await from more and more addicts using more and more pharmaceuticals?

And there’s plenty of blame for all those judges, doctors, lawyers, psychiatrists who help close the gap between prescription drugs and street drugs. For the military exhuming the abominations of MKULTRA by experimenting on those with PTSD, trying a little of this LSD, a little of that marijuana, some wires in the brain – who knows? We might find a way to create a new and better Manchurian Candidate, make robots out of soldiers, make mass murderers out of troubled spirits. And we can blame “non-profit organizations” like the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, who are spurring interest in using drugs to swap neuroses for outright insanity, organizations who secretly channel millions to legalize marijuana, to companies like Coca-Cola which once contained cocaine for a little boost, which is now going back to its roots, putting marijuana in its product. We can blame the legislators who get swept along in this tsunami of cash and influence, passing bills and listening to drug pushers in suits who convince them that it’s all good, and “here’s a little donation for your next campaign.” Psychiatrists who contend that everyone is basically nuts, so a little drug, a little electroshock, a little wire in the brain certainly couldn’t make you any worse…

But for all the blame to hand around, what about you? Do you know people who have their kids on speed (called ADHD medication by the shrinks)? Do you have a family member who is using marijuana or drinking too much? Are you on an anti-depressant because you feel bad sometimes? Do you get drunk on the weekends to unwind, or smoke a little weed, because after all, it’s legal now? Is your aged mother on “happy pills” so she won’t complain so much about the food, the loss of independence, the minimum-wage helpers telling her what to do in her assisted living facility? Do you nod sympathetically at people who start every conversation with “I’m ADHD” or “Since I was diagnosed with PTSD,” or “I’ve been depressed for some time now.”?

So what are you doing to help make things better? Is it all too big for you? Are you just one person? Are you in agreement with those who try to make addicts poor victims of the system? Who say that addiction, mental illness, criminality is all just a brain disease, not a choice, that we are all just victims of circumstance? We should all just go down the drain together and let the greatest country the world has ever seen evaporate like bong smoke.

Well, grow a pair why don’t you? Do something useful. Someone says. “I’ve got ADHD,” you can retort, “Who gave you that idea?” Someone says “I’m on an anti-depressant,” you can reply “What can you do to handle the situation that’s depressing you?” Someone says “marijuana is legal now, so it’s fine,” you say “So now the government has your best interests – and the taxes on weed – at heart?” Be blunt, invalidate those stupid ideas and self-victimization. Stigma is a good thing – it might help deter a kid thinking about drinking, or using meth or shooting up. Might keep him or her from ending up as a shit-stained twist of laundry in an alley somewhere, or a numbed-out methadone or pharmaceutical junkie for the rest of his or her life.

Do you vote a straight Democratic or Republican ticket, because you’re too lazy to read the voter guide? Or just not vote because there’s nothing you can do about it? Find out who’s taking money from big pharma, from the American Psychiatric Association, from the American Medical Association, the PACs and special interests and vote against them. Vote for those you think might not be in step with a stupider society.

Support religion and spiritual awareness and don’t fall for the efforts to pit one group against another. Support groups that help families, that repair marriages, that support kids and adoption and good education and a prosperous future – and beware of the “everybody-will-agree-with-this” PR and feel-good empty words of the campaign trail. Evaluate the politically correct movements to see if they lead to a better life and a better society, if they do, join, and if they don’t, oppose them even if you get hammered for it on social media.

There’s an old statement to the effect that “You get the government you deserve.” Look at what we’re getting and take some responsibility for it. It’s up to you not to your neighbors or your representatives. The left, the right, the middle, all political stripes have their own agendas, their own railroad tracks leading to their own little utopias. Do you want to travel with them? They make it easy, and they will appeal to your stupider self that thinks life consists of food, sleep and sex, and getting high can handle the rest, all funded by insurance, by taxes on “the fat-cat one percent” or the tiny fines on multi-billion-dollar drug firms.

So what can you do? Join up with effective organizations fighting stupidity and drug-induced dreaming not doing. Check out Foundation for a Drug-Free World, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights and other effective anti-drug and anti-stupidity groups. Sure, the organizations I mentioned above are related to the Church of Scientology, and all the crap you’ve heard about Scientology? It’s a measure of just how effective these organizations are in enlightening people on the drug and psychiatric agenda. Those lies and smears in the media? A badge of honor. If they were ineffective, they would be ignored by the psych-drug-media cartel, or perhaps even supported by it.

OK, so this mess is not all your fault, but if everyone woke up and went into action, this drugged-up country could reboot and get back to some basic principles. There are 21 of those principles, and here’s a link to them. Good luck.

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Creativity and Drugs

Posted on: July 21, 2018, in: , , , ,

creation-of-man-1159966_1920 (1)A few years ago, I walked with a line of tourists through Vatican City, down hallways hung with old masters, into the Sistine Chapel, where on the ceiling is depicted the creation of Adam – according to some, one of the most significant artistic accomplishments of humanity – representing the gift of life, the birth of the human race.

Art, music and architecture have long been an inspiration, a path up from the mud and toil of ordinary life, inviting mankind to a higher plane of existence, to an exaltation of the spirit. The soaring cathedrals, temples, music and religious art of the past served to remind mankind of higher harmonics of life, of his essentially spiritual nature. And in art as in life, there are many ways that spiritual nature can be expressed – from the otherworldly domes of the Sheikh Zayed mosque, the Great Synagogue of Budapest, to the graceful simplicity of a Shaker meeting house, or a garden of flowers.

Perhaps artistic expression allows man to share the joy of the Creator in fashioning a universe. “The greatest joy there is in life,” said Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, “is creating.”

But creative expression can be difficult, and so drugs have become a sort of shortcut.

Back in the 1960s, my English professor used Coleridge’s poem “Kubla Khan” as an illustration of how drugs could supposedly enhance creativity. The first part, said the professor – written from an opium-induced dream – is vivid and powerful. The second part – flat and uninspired – was written straight.

The professor’s implication for his class of budding writers: If you want to be creative, use drugs.

Such advice is not just a figment of the 1960s, as drugs have been a parasite on creative activity for centuries, and a death sentence to many of the most creative individuals. And the theme that drugs enhance creativity has continued unabated into today’s re-introduction of LSD and other psychedelic substances.

Meanwhile the body count of creative geniuses continues to climb. The death toll includes Jim Morrison, Janice Joplin, Michael Jackson, Prince, Jimi Hendrix, Chris Farley, John Belushi, and thousands of other brilliant men and women in search of a creative edge. Promised altered reality, they chased an elusive high with ever-increasing dosages enslaved by the pain of withdrawal.

But what’s the actual mechanism, and why are drugs often linked to creativity? “Drugs (LSD, marijuana, alcohol, whatever) produce a threat to the body like any other poison,” said L. Ron Hubbard in an essay on 8 Jan. 1969. And when the body is threatened, the being himself feels threatened with oblivion and so begins to obsessively create. What he creates are hallucinations. His reality is then filled with things not actually there, but a composite of his surroundings plus imagination plus things from his past. “Such persons as drug takers and the insane,” said Hubbard, “are thus slightly or wholly on an apparently different time track of … events.”

Creative people go out of agreement with everyday reality, and that vision of new possibilities is why we cherish and generously reward those who create the future. But drugs merely fill the body with poison, to squeeze a bag of nightmares, and what comes out is seldom creative or illuminating, and the results are often addiction and death for the writer, artist, painter, architect, or musician who experiments with drugs. And so the promise of the spirit, engendered in the aesthetics of art, often ends up – through drugs – mired in degradation, addiction and insanity.

Creativity has long been a sort of magical realm, a connection with the Muses, those daughters of Zeus who inspired mere mortals to wonderful creations. But drugs deny the spirit, fill the body with poison to try and squeeze out a few new ideas or a song lyric. As such, drugs are the antithesis of a life of the spirit and often spell the end of a promising and creative career.

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Pregnant? New Mother? California Bills Would Mandate Mental Health Screening

Posted on: June 12, 2018, in: , , , ,

The California State Senate is at it again. Three bills in the Senate would mandate mental health screenings for pregnant or
postpartum women (AB2193). Any obstetrician or gynecologist not doing the screening would be breaking the law. AB3032 would require hospitals to have a quality management program that includes postpartum depression, and AB1893 would secure federal funding to pay for this abomination.

Screenings are unnecessary and are flatly a scheme by the psychiatric/pharmaceutical cabal to feed more and more people into their pill mill. Keep head shrinkers and drug dealers out of your family, contact the bill pushers and tell them to push off!

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Jails and Prisons Encouraged to Keep Inmates on Pharmaceuticals

Posted on: May 30, 2018, in: , , , ,

Is medication-assisted-treatment a good idea in dealing with opioid addicts in jails and prisons? The use of buprenorphine is said to be more compassionate, because “there’s no need for someone to suffer through withdrawal,” that “inmates can die from dehydration and loss of electrolytes,” and thus substituting buprenorphine for the addict’s usual opioid is the best solution.

April, a former drug abuse and detox worker who does not wish to be named, is blunt in her appraisal: “That’s stupid,” She said. “Alcoholics are more likely to die from withdrawal than opioid addicts. Opioid addicts get diarrhea during withdrawal, so they need water and electrolytes, which can be easily handled by staff. They don’t need pharmacists, trained doctors and buprenorphine, which is just another opioid.”

She said that some addicts go to jail specifically to dry out.

And the articles touting the benefits of medication assisted treatment on inmates are a bit fuzzy regarding outcomes. Will the medication be used to gradually taper off the opioid and then off the buprenorphine, or will the inmate be maintained on the buprenorphine after release, or even for the rest of his or her life?

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Bad News for BigPharma

Posted on: May 23, 2018, in: , , ,

Pitchman PixabayAccording to Six Trends in ePharma Marketing, Embracing Digital Transformation in the Pharma and Healthcare Sectors, A Marketer’s Guide, some trends have developed which are alarming BigPharma but may spell relief to consumers. Among those are:

  1. Direct-to-Consumer television ads have lost their effectiveness and support. The American Medical Association supports a ban on prescription drug direct-to-consumer ads, and over a span of two years, consumers who asked their doctor about a drug advertised on TV dropped from 21 percent in 2015 to only 7 percent in 2017.
  2. Physicians have lost trust in BigPharma. According to ZS, the number of physicians who will meet with at least 70 percent of pharma sales reps who request a meeting has dropped to 44 percent, down from 80 percent in 2008.  And a Deloitte Consulting study revealed that 75 percent of physicians don’t entirely trust information that comes from BigPharma. In addition one-third of consumers blame doctors for the opioid crisis, so physicians are more wary of prescribing.
  3. Restrictions on social media advertising has forced BigPharma to resort to stealth advertising about wellness and conditions that only incidentally relate to a specific product. As STAT’s Rebecca Robbins explained, unbranded ads are “a stealthy and lightly regulated form of drug marketing focused on educating the public about a health condition — which the pharma company just happens to sell a product to treat.” In one month, for example, Merck spent an estimated $9.9m on ads on HPV and shingles, while Mylan spent an estimated $8.5m on ads about severe allergic reactions. Merck manufactures HPV and shingles vaccines, and Mylan manufactures the EpiPen, for severe allergic reactions.
  4. Drug-pricing controversies have put additional scrutiny on BigPharma from the public, government regulators and physicians.

However, BigPharma is busy exploiting some loopholes including:

  1. According to one survey, millennials are “by far the most receptive to pharmaceutical marketing” of any generation.
  2. Aggressive marketers can exploit electronic health records to influence providers through decision-support systems.
  3. And BigPharma’s pressure on physicians is relentless. According to ZS, each of the 26,000 prescribers contacted most frequently by pharma companies receive around 2,800 contacts per year from the pharmaceutical industry.

 

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Top NIMH Officials Admit Mental Health ‘Broken’

Posted on: May 21, 2018, in: , , , ,

In “My Adventures With the Trip Doctors” (May 15 New York Times Magazine,) author Michael Pollan drops a bomb – a simple idea that has been denied by the psychiatric, pharmaceutical and mental health communities for years: mainly that psychiatry and psychopharmaceuticals don’t work, and in fact can create and exacerbate insanity, dependence and suicide.

Pollan, while basically extolling the miracles of psychedelic drugs for everything from religious transformation to the healing of mental illness says this in passing:

“Such a new approach couldn’t come at a better time for a field that is ‘broken,’ as Tom Insel, head of the National Institute of Mental Health until 2015, told me bluntly. Rates of depression (now the leading cause of disability worldwide, according to the W.H.O.) and suicide are climbing; addictive behavior is rampant. Little has changed, meanwhile, in psychopharmacology since the introduction of SSRI antidepressants in the late 1980s. This may explain why prominent figures in the psychiatric establishment are voicing support for psychedelic research.”

This echoes a statement by Joshua Gordon,  the current head of the NIMH who took office last July. In an interview with the Washington Post, Gordon said “All these off-label uses of any of our psychiatric medications result from desperation on the part of both patients and physicians who don’t know what else to do for their patients . . . The evidence for any of them is nonexistent or minimal. But we don’t have good alternatives. We don’t have evidence-based treatments that really do the job. So that means that people turn to whatever can help them in a symptomatic way . . . It’s a problem that’s borne out of the fact that our treatments just don’t work, or don’t work well, for a substantial fraction of our patients.”

Recent studies indicate that about one in six Americans take psychiatric drugs, and today mental health is a $200 billion industry. With top officials at the NIMH admitting failure, it’s time to reevaluate our commitment to these drugs and those that prescribe them, and to carefully scrutinize measures to legalize psychedelics as “the next great thing.” Psychiatry is desperate for answers and psychedelics could be just the next in a long line of desperate measures that will create the next round of havoc.

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Today’s Traveling Patent-Medicine Show

Posted on: May 14, 2018, in: , , , , , ,

heroin bottleA hundred years ago, traveling shows peddled patent medicine, sometimes one step ahead of the authorities. Ingredients included opium, alcohol, laudanum, radium, and other illicit substances. Tapeworm larvae were sometimes suspended in weight-reduction remedies.

By the time the authorities closed in, the wagon, the salesman and his wares were gone, leaving the purchaser or the local doctor to deal with the side effects of the medication: addiction, parasite infestation, cancer or worse. In 2018, we may look at such abuses as a long-gone product of unbridled greed and horrific ignorance, that could not exist in our highly connected and well-educated society of today.

However, indications exist of a modern-day version of yesteryear’s patent medicine traveling show.

During the Civil War, for example, morphine was used as a painkiller for wounds. But many patients given the drug for pain became addicted. To counter the addictive nature of morphine, heroin – supposedly less addictive – was developed by Bayer and was widely adopted for pain reduction. Problem solved – at least until the addictive properties of heroin were manifest.

In 1947, Methadone – an opioid developed by Germany’s IG Farben in the 1930s – was approved for use in the United States to get addicts off heroin. But while the half-life of morphine is one to five hours, and heroin’s half-life is 30 minutes, Methadone’s half-life is 24 hours to 50 hours or more. That makes it useful for maintenance, as addicts can receive a dose in a registered facility once per day, but it makes getting completely off the drug very difficult.

For example, April, a former heroin counselor who does not wish to be identified, said that “in the 1970s, heroin addicts were being channeled to methadone maintenance as a way of stably getting off heroin. The heroin addict would go to a Methadone maintenance program that was fully funded at no out-of-pocket expense to the addict, and receive a daily dose of Methadone.”

Methadone, said April, did not provide the high but did eliminate the physical withdrawal symptoms, and allowed the addict a more stable life. They didn’t have to steal, they could hold a job, and have a somewhat manageable life as long as they went for their daily doses of Methadone. But there was a cost.

“Methadone had a much harder and longer detox period, so if the addict ever wanted to come off maintenance, they were in for a very uncomfortable ride.” Because of that, April’s non-profit detox unit couldn’t handle Methadone detox. “The street guidance,” she said, “was to spend three weeks or so to transition from Methadone back to heroin, and then check into heroin detox and in 3-10 days you were through withdrawal and could go back to the ‘manageable life’ you’d established while on Methadone maintenance.” At that point the addict was drug free but beset with cravings which had been kept at a distance with Methadone.

So why would an addict want to come off Methadone maintenance? “They have to show up at a clinic seven days a week,” said April, “line up with other junkies for their dose of the drug, so they are still a slave to the drug. They became a functional Methadone addict rather than a dysfunctional heroin addict.”

Methadone, as does any opioid, also fosters physical dependence, and long-term use can cause damage to nerves, liver and brain. Perhaps maintenance is an acceptable risk compared to the dangers of dirty needles, overdoses in alleys and robbing liquor stores or engaging in prostitution to secure the hundreds of dollars a day necessary to feed a raging drug habit, but nonetheless it is a far cry from being free of drug slavery.

Because of the dangers of addiction, physicians were reluctant to prescribe opioids for pain, except in the most severe cases. But in 1996, Purdue Pharma launched OxyContin as a timed-release supposedly non-addictive opioid pain reliever. Reassured, physicians began prescribing it.

Contrary to Purdue’s assertion of non-addiction, the FDA recently said OxyContin is more addictive than morphine. So once again, a drug solution becomes the next problem, as evidenced by the “opioid crisis” spurred by OxyContin and other pharmaceuticals. In 2016, according to the New York Times, 64,000 people were killed by drug overdoses of prescription opioid painkillers and heroin. And drug addiction costs the country $78.5 billion a year in healthcare, lost productivity, addiction treatment and criminal justice.

This problem/solution/problem theme continues today under the title of Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT) which substitutes a legally prescribed drug such as Methadone, Naltrexone or Buprenorphine for an illegal street drug. MAT is spreading across the country as a solution to the opioid crisis, embraced by cities, counties, states and even prison systems.

One hundred years ago, purveyors of dangerous patent medicine could slip away undetected. But today – with our electronic medical records and coordinated law enforcement systems – we might expect immediate action against such dangers. But OxyContin and its role in the opioid crisis took two decades to spot, with disastrous consequences.

For that reason, prescribing pharmaceuticals as solutions for addiction should be looked at with some skepticism. This is even more important as a rush of breathless reports appear in popular media about the benefits of LSD, ecstasy and marijuana as solutions for depression, PTSD, and more.

By the time we detect the harmful nature of these so-called remedies, the patent-medicine salesman has stuffed the cash into his pockets and moved on, while communities are left to pick up the pieces.

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A Drug-Free World isn’t Just Something You’re Smoking

Posted on: April 06, 2018, in: , , , , , , , , , , ,

drugfreeWatching the bad news about drugs, one could think the United States is circling the drain on its way to nodding oblivion. “The War on Drugs has been lost” is the theme, and the alternatives range from legalizing recreational marijuana,  following Oregon’s lead to “defelonize” hard drugs like heroin and meth,  using LSD and other psychedelics to “treat” crime, PTSD and depression, implementing “harm reduction” programs which supply clean needles and a “safe space to shoot up” for addicts, switching addicts from street drugs to pharmaceuticals in something called “Medication Assisted Treatment,” and so on.

One in six Americans is taking a psychiatric happy pill and more than eight million school kids are on psychiatric drugs to make them shut up and sit still. And 64,000 people died of drug overdoses in 2016 alone.

And in spite of skyrocketing profits in the $1 trillion pharmaceutical industry, drug abuse is hitting the economy hard. About 1 million people were out of the workforce in 2015 because of opioid addiction, and in order to hire new employees, some companies have been forced to stop drug testing. “See no evil, hear no evil, speak not the evil word of stigma.”

According to the psychs, stigma is bad, because drug addiction is a brain disease not a moral failing. You catch it from your drug dealer, a friendly psychiatrist, or the people you smoke legal pot with who also have heroin, meth, Oxycodone and other fun stuff in their pockets.

So is the solution just giving up and legalizing everything?

One person who doesn’t think so is Meghan Fialkoff, who with her father took on drug addiction in New York City. She seems to think something can be done about it, and her Foundation for a Drug-Free World took on the challenge of educating kids about drugs. Fialkoff started with after-school programs for elementary kids in the Bronx and the program’s success began spreading.

“Just say no” isn’t enough, kids need to know why, and Fialkoff and her group has reached some 12 million people in New York with a “Just Say Know” message. According to a Scientology Network video, her organization partners with the NYPD, school safety officers, community groups, rappers, musicians, Miss New York and others.

In a recent survey, 81 percent of teens said they had the opportunity to use illicit drugs and more than half tried them. Fialkoff is determined to provide an information vaccination before that happens.

Changing a culture of drug abuse and drug tolerance requires a sea change, a reality adjustment, an awakening to a world of possibilities that in some cases has been plunged into the darkness of drugs.

The link between a culture awash in drugs and the next generation is the dealer looking for his next customers: “Hey kid, wanna try something fun?”

What will your child say?

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