It seems that every other commercial on TV and one quarter of the ads in any given magazine are promoting some kind of prescription drugs. They vary from ones to help you get up, ones to help you put your head down at night, even ones to help reduce the burn and outbreak. In our society of information being everything, is this really helping us be more educated or simply putting more of a burden on doctors and the health industry? No doubt that the drug industry tends to be highly profitable and kick-backs to doctors for writing scripts is far from a secret, but does it really help anyone?

Personally, my trips to the doctor’s office for a prescription to help the common cold are getting less and less. Not only does it cost too much for the visit, the time spent with my family doctor has drastically been cut back, and I’ve been going to the same doctor for over 20 years now. I’m assuming that the pressures of turning more clients in a day, getting more scripts written and more money made for everyone is the reason, but is it helping us patients? With the internet being the way it is, television and magazine ads basically telling you the answers to every problem you may have, I’d imagine that some doctors simply open the door, ask the patient what they think they need prescribed, check a few things out and write the scrip. I’m lucky my doctor doesn’t do this, but I have no doubt other greedy doctors do.

For many years hard alcohol ads were banned from TV, and if I recall, tobacco ads were pulled a few years ago. They were pulled, from what I gather, in an interest to not influence youths and adults into bad habits. Prescription drug addiction is just as bad as being an alcoholic and I can easily see someone with an addictive personality being drawn into these ads, being told what their problems are and what a solution would be. I honestly think that marking a product that the end consumer cannot buy without first seeing a doctor should be eliminated as much as possible from media and marketing. It’s something you can’t go down to a corner store and buy [legally] and I’m willing to bet that someone has written a study somewhere to indicated a good number of people are being prescribed drugs that they either don’t need, are in the wrong quantity or are the wrong type, simply because the patient knows what the symptoms are before they step foot in the doctors office.

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