Who are the Real Pushers?

Anyone familiar with the film Reefer Madness is acquainted with one of the stock characters of drug prohibition literature, the pusher. He, sometimes she, is an immoral sinister figure who busily spends his day addicting youth to his wares, the lowest of the low. The problem with the picture of this figure is that there really is no need to go out of your way to find customers. In this country if you want to sell heroin or cocaine all you need to do is stand on any urban street corner and your often desperate customers will come to you. Giving free samples in order to hook kids is not necessary. When it comes to illegal drugs demand is usually much higher than supply. One of the most influential drug dealers of all time Milton Mezzrow in his autobiography took great pride in the fact that he did not sell marijuana to children.

On the other hand, modern pharmaceutical companies do sell drugs to children, some of them with suicide warning labels on the bottle. These large corporations also spend millions upon millions of dollars pushing their drugs on the American people. Just turn on any television or radio station and you will find advertisements for drugs to be ubiquitous. And, the trend has been to market these kinds of drugs to younger and younger people.

This pattern continues as an article in The Washington Times reports that the “Food and Drug Administration is reviewing drugs from AstraZeneca PLC, Eli Lilly & Co. and Pfizer Inc. for use in patients between the ages of 10 and 17. The drugs - already approved to treat schizophrenia and bipolar mania in adults - had combined sales of more than $7.4 billion last year, according to IMS Health.” A look at a list of the supposed symptoms of bipolar disorder (click on the whats in this article link for list) in adolescents covers a very wide range of behavior and seems to be saying that if you are not happy all of the time or you are not sad all of the time then you have this disease. So the customer base will be very large. Never mind saddling a ten year old with the proven side effects of weight gain and high blood sugar these drugs need to pushed, $7.4 billion is not enough.