The New Age Drug Dealer
Today’s addict has a number one ally. Our modern narcotic pushers aren’t pimps hanging out at school grounds or villains during a show of Law & Order. These people tend to be today’s pharmaceutical drug organizations. Those are the pharmacies that dispense their wares. Those are the doctors that prescribe a majority of these medications to their subjects with no true knowledge of addiction as well as suggest them without exit schemes, without a sensible policy for what sort of person must stop taking them once dependency is created. And there’s one new element in the addiction equation – the net. Procuring drugs on the web causes it to be quick, simple and easy anonymously. The medical/pharmaceutical delivery system liberally supplies top quality drugs as well as the state allows their delivery without any method of tracking them. The result: an addiction crisis of epidemic proportion.
The doctor who may have his personal practice is familiar with the “Drug Rep.” The Drug Rep (Representative) is a drop dead gorgeous twenty-two year old female decked out in a sharply cut, smart looking pin-striped business suit. Two years ago she was obviously a popular sorority sister at the local university. She was recruited for her first job by way of a major pharmaceutical company to represent their “product” by carrying what it’s all about to doctors from office to office. What it’s all about is contained in a satchel full of drug “samples.” 30 years ago she’d have been snapped up away from Phi Delta Kappa by American Airlines or Pan Am. She would have worn an identical smart suit, but with wings to be with her collar rather than a “Phizer” name card. If the drug rep was wheeling her sample bag through an airport waiting room rather than a doctor’s waiting room she would be virtually indistinguishable from yesteryear’s “Stew.”
Naturally, the drug rep has her counterpart in good-looking hunky guys in pin-striped suits, GQ profiles, sporting pearl-white, Cheshire Cat grins. They, too, carry drugs in their briefcases — samples of new product — for sleeplessness, anxiety, depression or pain. They will leave these gifts for the doctor to dispense freely to the patients. The thinking is that patients will try their wares and come back for more. First one’s free! Sound familiar? The big difference between the guy pushing drugs on the street and the heartthrob pushing a sample case is lunch. That’s right – a delicious, sumptuous spread of Chicken Marsala, Penne Pasta and Caesar Salad, or Thai Prawns in Black Bean Sauce or a good, square American meal, topped off with cheesecake and brownies. The drug companies will cater this daily repast for all the doctor’s employees and lay the food out buffet style in the office kitchen or common area. Each company has a different rep hawking a different variety of pharmaceuticals so nobody goes hungry in the good doctor’s office. Monday is Merck, Tuesday is Smith-Kline, Wednesday is Phizer, etc. Each drug company sends a different rep with a different lunch every single day.
The perky and pretty representatives will request a doctor and his staff (nurses, medical professionals, therapists, techs and secretaries) lavish dinners at top quality Steakhouses. The doctor and twelve with the doctor’s employees might be treated to tender filets and deep red in substitution for a five minute talk about the newest chemical offering.
Is that this payola? Yes! Pharmaceuticals are big business in the USA and around the world. They lobby Congress because they grease healthcare providers along the meal chain.
Of course, the drug companies have developed and distribute medications that are helpful, even life-saving if properly administered to patients. But abuse runs rampant in the system. This abuse is especially prevalent in Pain Management. Doctors treat patients for pain. Most of the complaints are legitimate. People suffer maladies and injuries that only opiates can temper. The problem is most doctors are not savvy about addiction. How often we have heard stories from drug dependent patients who were advised by their primary physician that when they had finished running the course of Vicodin or Oxycontin or Percocet the patient would be able to simply wean off these narcotics. But more often than not they cannot do this. Patients become dependent on these meds very quickly (often between three and four days) and stopping is simply not easy.
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