Drugs in America

Thousands of Americans die every year due to overdose of prescription medication; in fact, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, one person dies from a drug overdose every nineteen minutes. Prescription drug deaths have become so frequent that it has now become one of the leading causes of accidental death in this country. The C.D.C. also states that as of July 2012, thirty-four percent of American adults take at least one prescription drug on a regular basis, while eleven and a half percent take three or more prescription drugs regularly. There is some debate as to whether this percentage is due to physicians and their reasons for prescribing certain medications or the pharmaceutical companies and their efforts in developing countless drugs for every problem the human body can present. The drug companies research and manufacture their medications based on the demands of both patients and doctors, as well as the amounts that are being prescribed. Although pharmaceutical drugs play an important part in certain aspects of our health, ultimately, medical malpractice brought on by frequent payments from the pharmaceutical companies for prescribing certain medications is the main contributor to these alarming numbers.

Some say the blame should be distributed evenly between the amount of American doctors that are overprescribing or giving out a biased diagnosis, the massive pharmaceutical companies or the fact that our culture has become more inclined to look first to pharmaceutical fixes; but it’s the physicians that have the final say in this matter, making it impossible to point the finger elsewhere. The increase in Americans that are taking prescription drugs on a regular basis leads to over-worked and under-informed doctors that find themselves faced with a limited amount of time to deal with patients, research their individual needs, and whether or not a certain medication is right for them. An article on the website Scientific American says that “a new study finds that forty percent of physicians in hospitals report that, at least once a month, they took on more patients than they could safely handle”. They must also take into consideration the number of side effects and if the new medication they are planning to prescribe will combine safely with their current medication. All of these factors pose quite the list of checkpoints that these doctors simply cannot find the time to check off.

Regardless of our ever growing trend in upping our prescription pill intake and the countless over-worked physicians in this country, there is another entity that contributes to these problematic numbers. An article posted on the website First Research finds that the US Pharmaceutical manufacturing industry includes approximately fifteen-hundred companies with combined annual revenue of around two-hundred billion dollars, and it is expected to grow at an even higher rate in the next few years. That kind of money will