So much for the war on drugs.
While everyone bickers over health care reform and all of its mandates, loss ratios and shifting legal definitions fresh out of an Orwell novel, no one seems to be paying attention to the pharmacist behind the curtain.
Someone just sent me a new study – from the Centers for Disease Control, no less – that reveals one in five kids now are on some kind of prescription drug (if only I had that in school, maybe I could've managed a more socially acceptable career).
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And seniors? Nine out of 10 of them are hopped up on something. Overall, nearly half of us are walking around with a 'scrip, while almost a third of us boast at least a pair of pill bottles at home.
(Random thought here: All these drugs floating around like Halloween candy in September and we're still the fattest nation in the world? Maybe we're just getting the wrong pharmaceuticals?)
All told, drug costs in this country nearly topped out at $235 billion in 2008, roughly 10 percent of all health care spending that year.
And if you think it's gonna get better, you're kidding both of us. It's a perfect snapshot of us as a society: "Never mind the real problem. We'll take the quick, easy fix, even if it costs a little more."
So we couldn't just say no. We worry about meth taking over the trailer parks, while medical marijuana moves into our subdivisions. And while we point fingers at those crazy crack heads, we're happy to spend our golden years in euphoric oblivion.
I don't think we lost the war on drugs so much as we simply surrendered.
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