In the fall of 2015, the Food and Drug Administration approved the powerful (and highly addictive) painkiller Oxycontin to be prescribed to children as young as 11 years old.  If you wonder why we have the drug problem we have you don’t have to look far for answers.  The most important wall to build when it comes to drug abuse is around the Pharmaceutical firms, the prescription pads, and around the medicine cabinets in the average American home. 

Oxycontin is an extended-release opioid that has long been used to treat around-the-clock pain in adults. But most pain medications are not approved for use in children…until now.  They call this progress but I call this expanding the market for the drug cartel.  If we’re going to build a wall to protect our borders in an attempt to (in part) guard our children against the steady flow of illegal drugs coming across; then we’d better be willing to build a wall around the pharmaceutical world too. Consider the root source of many of our addition problems...doctors with prescription pads and incentives and pharmaceutical firms that care a whole lot more about profit margins than they do about health and the health and well-being of our children.  Prescribing addictive narcotics to children as young as 11 years old will never be a good idea under any circumstances.

Expanding The Drug Cartel?

I have four children who each had their wisdom teeth surgically removed.  My kids are just two years apart in age so every two years I was hauling one of them in for oral surgery.  The first three were offered prescription-strength Tylenol “as needed for pain”.  The fourth was prescribed Oxycontin “to be taken every 4 hours for pain“.  When I questioned the use of just a powerful drug for oral surgery the surgeon said “we have better ways of dealing with pain now” and suggested that I was not a compassionate mother if I’d allow my child “to suffer in pain when there is no need to”.  Suffer?  Not a chance!  But there is a huge gap between suffering from pain and feeding my children addictive narcotics in an already drug-crazed world.

None of my kids were loaded up with prescription drugs for the pain just because the meds were readily available. A little over-the-counter pain reliever and they managed just fine without additive narcotics.  BUT how many people question what the medical community “prescribes?”  Not nearly enough if you ask me.  If the doctor-god tells them they need it, they do it without question and without consideration for all of the OTHER problems that will come along with the pills. They’ll overlook the potential side effects and pop away with the satisfaction that they received their answer in a bottle…sad but true.

Parents have become part of the advancement of addition by their blind faith in a very broken system and by their own attraction to a narcotic for every ache and pain themselves

What does prescribing narcotics to young children have to do with our drug addiction problem across America?  A lot!  Widely prescribed opioids lead to addition and when the prescription drugs become too hard to find and/or no longer affordable at the rate of $30.00-$50.00 a pill; addicts will go to the streets for much more affordable and much more readily available heroin. If you wonder how and why so many young people could be hooked on heroin (and sadly so many are overdosing)…you just got your answer.

Until we get a handle on the legal drugs, it’s almost impossible to get a handle on the illegal ones.  Will you build a wall between yourself and your family and the pharmaceutical firms or are you content to get a new pill for a new problem every time you visit the office?  Will you question each prescription and do a little homework of your own to see what the side effects and the long-term penalty for use might be?  Will you ever embrace the fact that THERE IS NO CURE FOR ANY DISEASE WHATSOEVER?

It’s time to stop the blame game and to take control of our own health…for the sake of the next generation.  Will you join me?

ADVOCATING FOR BETTER HEALTH ACROSS AMERICA…

ONE LIFE AT A TIME!