If you have a problem, there's a pill to fix it.
In 1997, the Federal Food and Drug Administration loosened the regulations for direct-to-consumer advertising, allowing prescription drug commercials to permeate television and radio.
Medications are supposed to treat ailments, not generate more than $79 billion in business profits - which they do, cnnmoney.com reported.
For the most part, pharmaceutical companies serve a beneficial purpose in society, but at the same time, they also act as covert drug dealers. More than $4 billion was spent to push their products, according to Commercial Alert, a nonprofit organization that examines advertising.
Medications meant to be used by people in real pain, with real psychological problems, have been glorified, over-prescribed and, as a result, abused. Forty-four percent of about 600 patients who talked to their doctors about a drug they saw advertised on TV received a prescription for that medication, American Medical News reported in 2001.
We have been taught that feeling pain - or feeling anything for that matter - can be avoided.
Adderall to focus before class, Xanax before a presentation or OxyContin to have a good time - suburban junkies are a FDA stamp away from their street counterparts.
OxyContin, for example, is an opiate - just like heroin. Excruciating withdrawal effects, financial woes and shady behavior all come along with frequent abuse. Ironically, a symptom of chronic opiate abuse is depression, which can also be medicated.
The prescription drug issue is especially important because "the numbers of kids abusing prescription drugs dwarfs the numbers of kids using all other drugs combined except marijuana and alcohol," said Joseph Califano, president of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University.
More than 3 million children, ages 12 to 17, abuse prescription drugs, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Every day, the number of teens experimenting with medications increases by about 3,300.
According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, prescription drug abuse has increased as drugs become easier to obtain.
For example, United States prescriptions for stimulants - including those taken for ADHD - increased from about 5 million in 1991 to almost 35 million in 2007. Prescriptions for opioid painkillers such as OxyContin and Vicodin increased from 40 million in 1991 to 180 million in 2007, according to the Mayo Clinic.
The Student Health Center has taken steps to tighten prescription policies, according to Director Catherine Felix.
But it must go beyond that.
Movie stars and students are dying from overdoses, families are being torn apart by dangerous addictions and friends are lost behind a haze of anti-anxiety medications and painkillers.
Red Ribbon Week, taking place Oct. 23 to 28, focuses on drug education and prevention in elementary schools but curriculum neglects the pill-popping epidemic that has infected youth culture, despite the Web site's push for peer knowledge.
Educating youth and parents about the dangers is a first step, but the infatuation we've found in pills must end here. Electronic and commercial means of advertising should be completely banned. In other countries, it remains illegal to advertise prescriptions - we should follow their lead. Reversing the mindset won't be easy, but with efforts taken early on by parents, doctors and educators, the cycle of abuse doesn't ever have to start for the next generation.
Life's full of ups and downs - but it doesn't have to be filled with uppers and downers.
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