Dr. Josh Kane Head Researcher at A Better Today Recovery Services and Lecturer and ASU continues this series from Big Pharma Opioid Epidemic, Part 8 – Adderall Abuse.
Marketing Amphetamines
Regardless of little evidence, Amphetamines are marketed as a prescription ADHD medication that can help children to improve academic performance and life successes.
Dr. Josh Kane head researcher at A Better Today Recover Services and lecturer at Arizona State explains, “Pamphlet after pamphlet has been printed with a mother hugging her child in one arm and in the other, a paper with a big red B plus.”
Advertisements for ADHD medications have the mothers describing their children as finally being able to complete their school work, more willing to do chores and having an independence that they didn’t have before.
“The nerve of big pharma – an independence that I can count on, through dependence on a stimulant.”
What Big Pharma Doesn’t Tell You
While prescriptions for ADHD, such as Adderall, continuously show children and adults who are grateful for the medication, there is a lot that the ads don’t say.
“That Adderall is and will be abused for weight loss, that Adderall is addictive, that its effects are similar to Methamphetamines.”
Adderall is only one metho group from actually being Methamphetamine. It has now become a street drug, people who get the prescriptions turn around and sell the pills. It has become a growing problem and Adderall overdose rates continue to rise.
“Last year [2015] Shire [pharmaceutical company] paid a fine for $57.5 million for false and misleading advertising for its entire stable of drugs, including Adderall.”
That might sound like a lot of money but in 2014 Shire made a profit of $6.6 billion while the market of ADHD medication reaches over $9 billion by 2012.
ADHD Kids are now ADHD Adults
The first group of children that were bombarded with stimulants for ADHD is now adults, now the advertisements have changed to include them too.
“The other new frontier is prescribing Amphetamine based medications for Oppositional Defiant Disorder or ODD. ODD is simply anti-authoritative perspectives … and some mild acting out on it.”
According to Kane, society is becoming more and more authoritarian and dominated by big corporations like big pharma.
“What we need now more than ever is anti-authoritarians but before an anti-authoritative person, like an MLK, like a Malcolm X, like a Thomas Jefferson can mature and direct their anti-authoritarianism to useful political action and means, they are targeted by big Pharma.”
We medicate them before their real potential can ever be realized.
“The Idea is to turn anti-authoritarians into zombies, addicts, shells of themselves and the idea is for big pharma to profit every step of the way.”
…continue on to Big Pharma Opioid Epidemic, Part 10 – End Addiction to Prescription Drugs.
