Drug Culture
« Previous EntriesDeath In The Mail
Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008The problem with ordering prescription drugs from online pharmacies, is that you have no idea what you’re getting. Just ask the woman from this recent CNN Health article.
“Every night before her husband went to bed, he would open a prescription bottle of the muscle relaxant Soma and swallow the eight or nine pills it took [...]
Bill Maher On Prescription Drugs
Monday, June 2nd, 2008Bill Maher
Bill Maher - one of my very favorite comedians - pokes fun at our over-dependency on prescription drugs in his stand-up routine “The Decider.” I like how Maher says we “come up with the pill before the disease.” Sometimes it certainly seems that way!
Drugstore Cowboys
Monday, June 2nd, 2008Drugstore cowboy video
I was just thinking about the movie Drugstore Cowboy the other day. It’s one of my favorites, and I think it was a little ahead of its time. It was made in 1989, and while pharmacy robberies have been going on since the first pharmacy opened its doors, they probably weren’t as [...]
Dangerous Trades
Saturday, May 31st, 2008A recent post on the blog DestinationRX draws attention to the fact that students as young as middle school are trading their prescription drugs for alcohol, or other prescription drugs. The post references an eFlux Media article that details how 15 students at a Boulder, Colorado middle school were busted for a trading scam that [...]
Drug Spam
Wednesday, May 28th, 2008So just out of curiosity, I decided to peruse the contents of my spam folder in both of my e-mail accounts. I wanted to get an idea of how many prescription drug ads get sent to me everyday.
Here are some examples of the tantalizing subject lines I see as I scroll through my spam messages:
“Pills [...]
Facebook Prescriptions
Friday, May 23rd, 2008So wait, I was just perusing Facebook and came across an application that I - amazingly enough - haven’t been asked to add to my profile yet. It’s the Facebook “Script Pad.”
“You’ve just took an course in medicine on the internet, and you’ve been given the almighty Prescription (”Script”) Pad. You’re licensed to kill… err… [...]
The New War On Drugs
Thursday, May 22nd, 2008The Anti-drug.com website features a whole host of media items designed to educate parents about prescription drug abuse among teenagers. The main thrust of the site seems to be that most parents have no clue how prevalent the problem of prescription drug abuse is among teens, and that parents are the first line of defense [...]
Half of America is on drugs
Friday, May 16th, 2008Apparently, half of America is on prescription meds
“Americans buy much more medicine per person than any other country. But it was unclear how their prescriptions compare to those of insured people elsewhere. Comparable data were not available for Europe, for instance.
Medco’s data show that last year, 51 percent of American children and adults were taking [...]
Interview with Michael Santoro
Monday, May 12th, 2008In a May 12 phone interview, author and Associate Professor Michael Santoro discusses his 2005 book “Ethics and the Pharmaceutical Industry,” as well as current trends in America’s drug industry culture.
michael santoro audio file
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT
Michael Santoro, co-author of “Ethics and the Pharmaceutical Industry,” is an Associate Professor in the Business Environment Department at the Rutgers [...]
What hydrocodone order?
Monday, May 5th, 2008On May 3, the Maryland-based prescription drug distributor McKesson Corp. announced that it had agreed to pay $13 million in civil fines in order to settle allegations that it had sold 3 million units of hydrocodone to NewCare Pharmacy in East Baltimore and large quantities of phentermine-based products to Smeeta Pharmacy in Highland.
The owners of [...]