The ever growing problem of pharmaceutical drugs

Why would people take drugs that offer so many harmful and possibly life-ending side effects, when the symptoms that they suffer from are nowhere near as bad as some of the potential side effects that those pills and other pharmaceutical remedies have?

What Would You Do To Get Better?

Most people, when faced with a major diagnosis, grasp at whatever straws they are offered. If you were suffering from depression, would you knowingly take a drug that causes some people to think that suicide is an attractive alternative to their everyday lives, even if those days are filled with pain and suffering? I would surely hope not. Would you take a drug that has a long, long list of side effects, possible side effects and probable side effects? There are some drugs advertised on television where a 30-second advertisement takes up 10 seconds with the benefits that the drug offers to people suffering from some mild disorder, and then it takes 20 seconds of very fast talking to outline some of the more dangerous side effects that the drug may cause.

Would You Trade Your Life So That Your Doctor Can Have a Great Golfing Weekend?

When you are suffering from depression and take a drug, which I won't name here for fear of being sued by the huge pharmaceutical corporations (Cymbalta), has side effects that include "feelings of suicidal tendencies" and "increased thoughts of suicide", you are pretty much playing Russian Roulette with your life. Or, rather, your doctor and the pharmaceutical companies are playing Russian Roulette with your life. Doctors get kickbacks from the major pharmaceutical companies to prescribe so many of their drugs, and in doing so many give their patients a new drug that may not interact well with drugs that the patient is already taking.

Who Takes Liability?

Who would be at fault if someone in your family were to be prescribed a new drug that didn't interact well with drugs that they were already taking? What would you do if the new drugs caused your family member to die, or to end up permanently disabled due to bad side effects? Would you sue? Unless there is a major litigation taking place against the drug makers, which there usually are about 4 or 5 ongoing at any given time in the past 10 to 15 years, your chances of winning, let alone launching a lawsuit against these overly lawyer-ed up corporations is nil to none, even if you do have the few hundred thousand dollars it would take just to get the case into a courtroom setting? These are companies that just don't settle out of court unless someone has died and the cause is unmistakably the fault of the new drug.

Are There Any Drugs With No Major Side Effects?

Yes, there are drugs out there that have little to no side effects. One of them is called "marijuana". It is being prescribed for people suffering from Aids, HIV, cancer, MS, MD, fibromyalgia, ALS, severe and/or chronic pain, glaucoma, migraine headaches, etc etc etc - I would have to list over 100 disorders that the Canadian and US governments have agreed that marijuana helps to alleviate the symptoms of.

Now, don't get your panties in a bunch. Marijuana, pot, Mary-Jane, weed, whatever you reefer (pun!) to it as, it has no negative side effects. None. Nadda, Zip. Zilch. Zero. Not one single bad side effect comes from smoking or ingesting marijuana, aside from a case of the giggles, the munchies and maybe a little nap.

So, Why Are The Marijuana Laws for Patients Being Changed?

The problem with prescribing marijuana to patients is that the government and the pharmaceutical companies don't make money off of it. It is not taxed, nor is it provided to patients through a pharmacy. So, the government has decided to change the medical marijuana laws, making it so that patients can no longer legally grow their own prescriptions. Nor will patients be able to assign someone else to grow it for them (a designated grower).

The government was providing marijuana to patients, but it was a very weak strain, chopped up with all of the sun leaves and sticks (which have no medicinal benefits) and irradiated before being shipped, via normal snail mail, to the patients. Prescriptions were being "lost" in the mail system (read: being stolen by postal workers), and patients, once they tried it, were scrambling to find alternative sources. The compassion clubs that had sprung up and were providing top of the line marijuana strains to patients, with strains being matched to the symptoms that patients suffer from, were declared illegal. They were paying taxes, but the problem was that the government thought that there was something amiss. If pot was involved, and the government wasn't providing it, there must be an illegal angle to it, some bikers or mafia groups must be involved.

What Can You Do About It?

You can email, send letters and text messages to your local politicians, the Prime Minister and the Minister of Health and Community Services in Canada, and the President of the United States of America. If they get enough people saying that they want marijuana to be available to all of the people that have found that it is the best drug that they have ever taken to alleviate their symptoms and provide them with a better quality of life.

Possibly, the real reason that marijuana is being taken away from patients or being made too inaccessible to them is the amount of pharmaceutical drugs that pot replaces. And, no, pot is not a gateway drug, you don't all of a sudden become a crazed maniac, and you don't all of a sudden start craving heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine.

Really, what's wrong with society these days?