http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2008/1/15/recreational-drugs-far-less-likely-to-kill-you-than-prescribed-drugs.aspx

Recreational Drugs FAR Less Likely to Kill You than Prescribed Drugs!

By Christopher Kent, D.C., J.D.

Recreational drugs, including cocaine and heroin, are responsible for an estimated 10,000-20,000 American deaths per year [1,2]. While this represents a serious public health problem, it is a "smokescreen" for America's real drug problem. America's "war on drugs" is directed at the wrong enemy. It is obvious that interdiction, stiff mandatory sentences, and more vigorous enforcement of drug laws have failed.

The reason is simple. Cause and effect have been reversed.

The desire to solve problems by taking drugs is a product of our culture. When a child is taught by loving parents that the appropriate response to pain or discomfort is taking a pill, it is obvious that such a child, when faced with the challenges of adolescence, will seek comfort by taking drugs.

Drugs are Dangerous Whether Pushed or Prescribed
While approximately 10,000 per year die from the effects of illegal drugs, an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reported that an estimated 106,000 hospitalized patients die each year from drugs which, by medical standards, are properly prescribed and properly administered. More than two million suffer serious side effects. [3]
An article in Newsweek [4] put this into perspective. Adverse drug reactions, from "properly" prescribed drugs, are the fourth leading cause of death in the United States. According to this article, only heart disease, cancer, and stroke kill more Americans than drugs prescribed by medical doctors. Reactions to prescription drugs kill more than twice as many Americans as HIV/AIDS or suicide. Fewer die from accidents or diabetes than adverse drug reactions. It is important to point out the limitations of this study. It did not include outpatients, cases of malpractice, or instances where the drugs were not taken as directed.

According to another AMA publication, drug related "problems" kill as many as 198,815 people, put 8.8 million in hospitals, and account for up to 28% of hospital admissions. [5] If these figures are accurate, only cancer and heart disease kill more patients than drugs. Has the situation improved since the publication of this information? Hardly. Null [6] et al have published the most comprehensive and well-documented study I have seen of deaths associated with medical practice. In this report, their research revealed some shocking facts. The findings are summarized in the abstract:

"A definitive review and close reading of medical peer-review journals, and government health statistics shows that American medicine frequently causes more harm than good. The number of people having in-hospital, adverse drug reactions (ADR) to prescribed medicine is 2.2 million. Dr. Richard Besser, of the CDC, in 1995, said the number of unnecessary antibiotics prescribed annually for viral infections was 20 million. Dr. Besser, in 2003, now refers to tens of millions of unnecessary antibiotics.

The number of unnecessary medical and surgical procedures performed annually is 7.5 million. The number of people exposed to unnecessary hospitalization annually is 8.9 million. The total number of iatrogenic deaths shown in the following table is 783,936. It is evident that the American medical system is the leading cause of death and injury in the United States. The 2001 heart disease annual death rate is 699,697; the annual cancer death rate, 553,251."

Drugs: Number One Killer
The authors conclude: "When the number one killer in a society is the healthcare system, then, that system has no excuse except to address its own urgent shortcomings. It's a failed system in need of immediate attention. What we have outlined in this paper are insupportable aspects of our contemporary medical system that need to be changed -- beginning at its very foundations."

A recent article in Archives of Internal Medicine [7] stated that in the seven year period from 1998 through 2005, reported serious adverse drug events increased 2.6-fold, and fatal adverse drug events increased 2.7-fold. The authors noted that reported serious events increased 4 times faster than the total number of outpatient prescriptions during the period. Another study concluded that the majority(86%) of the adverse drug reactions for which patients were admitted to a medical intensive care unit were preventable. [8]

One proposed solution to the illegal drug problem was encouraging potential users to ignore peer pressure and "just say no." Interestingly, this strategy is not being recommended for prescription drugs. Bruce Pomeranz, MD , one of the authors of the JAMA paper, said he is not warning people to stay away from drugs. "That would be a terrible message," he said. Lucian Leape, MD, of the Harvard School of Public Health said, "When you realize how many drugs we use, maybe those numbers aren't so bad after all." [4]

Does that mean that the number of deaths due to illegal drugs, suicide, HIV/AIDS, diabetes, accidents, and drunk driving "aren't so bad" either? Does it mean that we shouldn't discourage drunk driving or unsafe sex?


The folly of such double standards should be obvious to all. It is time to address the real drug problem -- the cultural notion that the first solution to seek for relief of life's problems is a drug. That's the drug culture we need to address.

References
1. "Drug deaths." Globe & Mail (Canada). February 27, 1998.
2. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. CDC. 2007;56(05):93-96.
3. Lazarou J, Pomeranz BH, Corey PN: "Incidence of adverse drug reactions in hospitalized patients." JAMA 1998;279:1200.
4. Kalb C: "When drugs do harm." Newsweek. April 27, 1998. Page 61.
5. "Reaction." American Medical News. January 15, 1996. Page 11.
6. 1. Null G, Dean C, Feldman, M, Rasio, D, Smith D: "Death by Medicine." Life Extension. March, 2004. www.lef.org/magazine/mag2004/mar2004_awsi_death_01.htm
7. Moore TJ, Cohen MR, Furberg CD: Serious adverse drug events reported to the Food and Drug Administration, 1998-2005. Archives of Internal Medicine 2007;167:1752-1759.

8. Rivkin A: Admissions to a medical intensive care unit related to adverse drug reactions. American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy 2007;64(17):1840-1843.
Many thanks to Dr. Kent for his article. He is a good friend, and one of the leaders in the chiropractic profession. Dr. Kent was named the International Chiropractors Association (ICA) “Chiropractic Researcher of the Year” in 1991, and was the recipient of that honor from World Chiropractic Alliance (WCA) in 1994. Dr. Kent was also selected “Chiropractor of the Year” in 1998 by the International Chiropractors Association, and is the Main Representative of the WCA to the Department of Public Information, the first chiropractor elected to that position.

Dr. Kent is co-founder of the Chiropractic Leadership Alliance (CLA) along with another good friend of mine, Patrick Gentempo. An attorney as well as a chiropractor, Dr. Kent is an active member of the State Bar of California, and is admitted as an attorney of the United States District Court, Southern District of California. You can read more about Dr. Kent's work in a special issue of The American Chiropractor.

Dr Mercola comments:

Dr. Kent is one of the sharpest health commentaters that I know of, and has written many masterful articles about the dangers and hypocrisy of conventional medicine, and the insidious pharmaceutical PR campaigns that create phony diseases to justify the use of even more unnecessary drugs.

Taking a Closer Look at Drug-Induced Mortality Statistics
According to available data, some 106,000 hospitalized patients die each year from drugs that are properly prescribed and properly administered, and side effects kill as many as 198,815 people.

Let me give you an idea of what the medical error and mortality rate of conventional medicine looks like:

The recorded error rate of ICU’s is like the post office losing more than 16,000 pieces of mail every hour of every day, or banks deducting 32,000 checks from the wrong bank account every hour, 24/7
The recorded medical errors and deaths equate to six jumbo jets falling out of the sky each day, 365 days a year
Since 2001, a recorded 490,000 people have died from properly prescribed drugs in the United States, while 2,996 people died on U.S. soil from terrorism, all in the 9/11 attacks; prescription drugs are therefore 16,400 percent more dangerous than terrorism. If deaths from over-the-counter drugs are also included, then drug consumption leaps to being 32,000 percent more dangerous than terrorism. And conventional medicine viewed as a whole is 104,700 percent deadlier than terrorism
However, sobering as this may sound, let’s take a closer look at these statistics, to give you an even more shocking view of what your REAL risk of drug-induced death might be.

During sworn testimony before the U.S. Senate on November 18, 2004, whistle-blower David J. Graham, MD, MPH, stated that according to estimates derived from the Kaiser-FDA study, Vioxx caused upwards of 160,000 heart attacks and strokes. This data was published in The New England Journal of Medicine October 21, 2004; 351(17): 1707-1709.

Of these, an estimated 30-40 percent probably died. That would put us at an estimated 64,000 deaths from Vioxx alone between its release in 1999 until its removal in 2004. That makes just one drug responsible for about 6 percent of all recorded deaths from side effects in one year.

Or, based on the other statistic of 490,000 deaths from prescription drugs between 2001 and 2007, which comes out to be about 70,000 people per year, Vioxx alone would account for just under 19 percent of drug deaths per year.

What I’m driving at here is the fact that the number of properly recorded drug-induced deaths are MINUSCULE in relation to the REAL numbers. Reputable sources state the number of properly recorded deaths and side effects from drugs to be around 6 percent. Some state it’s probably lower than one percent. I’ve never seen anyone go over 10 percent.

So, let’s be generous and say it’s actually as high as 10 percent. Then the recorded number of deaths attributable to side effects of pharmaceutical drugs, currently at 198,815 people per year, would look more like this:

1,988,150 people per year.

According to the 2007 CDC mortality report, just under 2.4 million people died in the U.S. in 2004 from any and all causes. Also note that these numbers are nearly four years old; you can bet that they are far higher today.

Am I playing with estimated numbers? Sure. Could I be way off implying that drugs might actually be the underlying cause of about 80 percent of all deaths in the United States?

Possibly.

Then again, is it not possible that a vast majority of heart disease, cancer and stroke are misdiagnosed side effects of synthetic drug use? You decide -- but based on the scientific findings, many of the drugs on the market do indeed increase your risk of everything from heart problems to diabetes, and millions of people are taking anywhere from five to 25 different medications at the same time!

Until accurate and unbiased reporting of side effects and deaths from drugs is implemented, we’ll never know the true extent of the genocidal drug experiment you’re experiencing. But there is absolutely no doubt that FAR more people die from pharmaceutical drug use than from illegal drugs.

Street Drugs VS Pharmaceuticals
As I stated in a previous article, we live in a strange paradox where society condemns street drugs like amphetamines, yet has no qualms about giving it in massive doses -- under legalized brand names -- to two-year-olds who are in their prime physical- and mental developmental years.

I just don’t buy the idea that so many American children are in need of amphetamines to function “normally,” and neither should you -- considering the fact that death from prescribed psychotherapeutic drugs has doubled in five years.

You may also have noticed that more and more parents are now facing jail time for refusing to drug their children for invented diseases that -- according to an ever more involved government -- must be treated with pharmaceutical drugs, while overlooking all other alternatives. Even the American government is siding with Big Pharma, using legal action to perpetuate this bizarre forced-legal-drug-use scheme.

Meanwhile, the pharmaceutical industry is raking in massive profits -- more than three times the average of other Fortune 500 industries -- even after including all research and development costs. Let’s face it. Pharmaceuticals are not about making you healthy and well.

Make no mistake, there is no such thing as a pharmaceutical drug that can offer true prevention, because synthetic chemicals cannot produce health. They do not belong in your body to begin with, and you should know that your body will always try to protect itself from foreign substances and “invaders,” so how would these chemicals possibly create health?

I realize that asking you to Take Control of Your Health means battling a massive drug culture that has permeated the very core of American society. But there is no magic pill! You cannot cure your ailments with pharmaceutical drugs.

Just Say No to ALL Drugs, and Embrace Optimal Health

Rather than focusing more time and attention on your health as you age, or as you see degeneration setting in, many of you will settle for a “diagnosis” and the latest medications. Realize that the only winners here are the ones who profit financially.
Do not seek passive medical intervention for your physical and mental wellbeing – you have to actively participate in it.
When symptoms arrive as a result of how poorly you've neglected your body and mind, take personal responsibility for your own wellness (restoring wholeness) and trust in the God-given recuperative powers of your body, rather than seeking out those who are only too willing take on this role for you.

As a result of handing over the full authority of your life over to the industry of medicine, the pharmaceutical and medical establishments have become so bloated, profitable and powerful, we're now witnessing it getting completely out of control.
The harm that the present health care delivery system causes now outweighs the good. It's time that balance gets restored -- taking the good of medicine and replacing the bad with new ways of thinking and more appropriate ways of taking care of your body.

Dr. Bruce Lipton offers encouraging and enlightening advice on how to do this, and reminds us that conventional medicine is in fact referred to as “the central dogma” in medical schools. And dogma literally means, “A belief based on religious persuasion and NOT scientific fact.”

Whereas the current medical dogma states that you are ruled by your genes, and therefore you are at “risk,” you are a victim of your genetic makeup. But the new biology has already dispelled this idea as a myth, a belief that is not based on scientific fact. In truth, your genes do not predispose you to any particular fate. Instead, your mind, which you have total control over, rules over both your genetic, and cellular expression.

What Dr. Lipton refers to as the “new biology” has proven that our current view of biology is just as incorrect as our pre-1925 view that we live in a material universe.

As Dr. Lipton said in my recent interview with him, “… the new biology is going to take us from a world today of crisis and ill health, and a failing environment and world, and take us to another level of masterful control, where we -- in our consciousness and our experiences of life -- will actually have power over our own lives and not be the victims that we were programmed to be.”

Further, Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) reports an impressive number of cases wherein the symptoms of major diseases improve rapidly by simply addressing the emotional and energetic causes of disease. Hundreds of these cases are written up on the EFT website and many are filmed so you can see the results right before your eyes. No drugs, radiation or surgeries necessary.

As you move into a brand new year, remember: You’re in control.

Once enough people have had enough, and enough people become the change they desire, change will be inevitable.
Make this the year that you take control of your health and life. For even more inside information from the best health experts, consider joining my brand new Inner Circle Program.

Related Articles:
''Legal'' Drugs That Are More Dangerous Than Illegal Ones Medicalisation: "Disease Mongering" How Many of These Ridiculous "Disorders" Do YOU Suffer From?


National Vital Statistics Report
Deaths – Final Data for 2004
August 21, 2007

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr55/nvsr55_19.pdf

 

 

"The CDC reports that from 1999 to 2004, unintentional poisoning death from prescription drugs sleeping pills, antidepressants and tranquilizers grew 84 percent to 20,950 deaths, overtaking cocaine and heroin combined as the leading cause of lethal overdose."

http://www.injuryboard.com/national-news/prescription-drug-deaths-soar.aspx?googleid=29488
Prescription Drug Deaths Soar
Posted by Jane Akre
Thursday, February 07, 2008 11:38 AM EST

Sometimes it takes "celebrity" to bring to light a national issue, in this case a chronic condition for many everyday Americans.

Heath Ledger's death on Jan. 22 was due to an accidental mixture of prescription drugs, New York City's Chief Medical Examiner has concluded.

The autopsy report on Ledger is now public record and counts six prescription drugs as the cause of his death including Oxycodone, Hydrocodone, Diazepam, Temazepam, Alprazolam, and Doxylamine.

It is not likely a single doctor prescribed all of the drugs but rather that they were obtained from numerous sources.

"If someone has an overdose death with that kind of toxicology report, it's usually an indication that they were either doctor-shopping or purchasing medications either on the street or on the Internet," said Andrew Kolodny, a psychiatrist at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn tells Reuters.

Oxycodone is a painkiller, Hydrocodone is also known as Vicodin, Diazepam is commonly called Valium, Temazepam treats anxiety or sleeplessness, Alprazolam is known as Xanax, and Doxylamine is a sedating antihistamine often used as a sleep aid.

It is suspected that the combination of drugs suppressed his respiratory system until Ledger stopped breathing.

Dr. Marc Galanter of NYU Medical Center tells CBS News, "It can be a deadly mix anytime and, you know, it creates a clouding of people's alertness so they don't know how much they're taking."

Writing to ABC News blog, a former addict says the problem is you don't think there are limits. "YOU PEOPLE ARE MISSING THE POINT! the reason he [Ledger] had so many different prescription was because he wanted to get HIGH. i know because this is a laundry list of the drugs i took when i was an addict myself. you take the vicodin and oxy to feel good, then the benzos (xanax, valium) to smooth out the edges, and then some sleeping pills to get some rest afterwards. it wasn't a mistake where one drug didn't work so he got something else! its classic painkiller addiction. and YES, he doctor shopped and used multiple pharmacies, even addicts don't know their limits and never think they will OD."

The actor was found dead in his Manhattan apartment January 22nd with the medication near his body. He had been complaining of anxiety, an inability to sleep, had recently traveled from overseas and reportedly had pneumonia.

A recent revelation by the mother of Britney Spears shows the singer also has a precarious relationship with prescription drugs. In a recent statement by Lynne Spears to a court, Spears says her daughter is being fed a combination of drugs -Adoral, Seroquel and Risperdol by her so-called manager who sometimes crushes them up in drinks and food.

According to the testimony, "He told us that he puts them in her food and that that was the reason she had been quiet for the last three days (she had been sleeping). He told us that the doctor who is treating her now is trying to get her into a sleep-induced coma so that they could then give her drugs to heal her brain."

Britney was recently hospitalized in a psychiatric unit.

Ledger's family hopes his death shines a spotlight on a long under-reported issue - you are now more likely to die from prescription drugs than recreational ones.

A "pill for what ails you" from headaches to heartache and an underestimation of prescription drugs' potency has led to a dramatic rise in lethal drug overdosing since the early 1990s.

The CDC reports that from 1999 to 2004, unintentional poisoning death from prescription drugs sleeping pills, antidepressants and tranquilizers grew 84 percent to 20,950 deaths, overtaking cocaine and heroin combined as the leading cause of lethal overdose.

The FDA compiled reports from 1998 to 2005 and finds that dangerous side effects and deaths from prescription and over-the-counter medications almost tripled to nearly 90,000 incidents.

Potent narcotic painkiller OxyContin was among the 15 drugs most often linked to death. Others include insulin, Vioxx, Remicade, and Paxil. Vioxx was removed from the market in 2004.

According to the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) in 1998, a report finds that prescription drugs kill about 106,000 Americans each year - that's three times as many as are killed by automobiles-making prescription drug death the fourth leading killer after heart disease, cancer and stroke.

Last year Journal of the American Medical Association puts death from all drugs, illegal and prescription, second only behind car accidents as a cause of death.

The rise in deaths coincides with the direct marketing of prescription medication to the public. Prescription drug sales have soared nearly 500 percent since 1990.

You don't have to wait 30 seconds to see a drug ad on television or head one on the radio. Then there is the confusion that if it is prescribed it can't be dangerous.

That's what 46-year-old Lynn Ray thought. Ray is one of about 9 million Americans who use prescription drugs for non-medical purposes.

46-year-old had recently lost her infant son and took a short course of treatment with tranquilizers.

But if she was supposed to take one Xanax over an eight-hour period, she'd take two or three to intensify the calming effect. Doctor-shopping followed while she fabricated different pain symptoms to get multiple prescriptions.

Ray had convinced herself that abusing prescription drugs was safer than abusing heroin, marijuana, and other "street drugs." "I would never do those," she says. "I figured I had a prescription for what I was doing, which made it OK."

Blogging to the New York Daily News, BJMoore17, who has worked in a hospital pharmacy for the last eight years sees it every day and writes, ".it is amazing to me the number of people that think it is okay to combine multiple drugs. They have no idea that it could harm them. That's why there are pharmacists in hospitals and pharmacists on the nursing units of hospitals. There is just so much risk in prescribing medications and the physicians do not know everything about medications. The physicians are there to diagnose, but they need a whole team of medical professionals to give the safe and proper care to every patient."

Another writes that prescription drug abuse is rampant among teenagers who take pills from their parent's medicine cabinet. "Maybe now people will realize this is a HUGE problem with teens all over the country, and not just the new 'in' of Hollywood. I am an 18 year old who hears every day about kids my own age talking about these same prescription drugs that are SO easy to get, whether from a parent, friend or direct from the doctor himself. Kids carry these 'Candies' in little containers to school and sell them in the halls between class!"

Every day it's estimated 2,500 teens abuse a prescription pain killer for the first time.

The National Institute of Drug Abuse reports that among 12th grade students, Vicodin is the most abused followed by amphetamines, tranquilizers and OxyContin (oxycondone).

Almost as if on cue, the White House Office of National Drug Control policy had been planning to unveil an ad campaign to target prescription drug abuse by teens.

But appearing too close to the death of Ledger, the ad campaign began on Super Bowl Sunday. #