Apparently the incidence of babies born in the US with opiate withdrawal has spiked in the Bush decade. New born infants with symptoms increased 3x, from prescription and recreational drug use. Babies gestated with these powerful drugs in the mothers system are less well developed.
An editorial in the Journal of The American Medical Association accompanying the study said that while such opiate medications provide “superior pain control” they have been “overprescribed, diverted and sold illegally, creating a new opiate addiction pathway and a public health burden for maternal and child health”. In 2011, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned that painkiller abuse in the US had reached “epidemic proportions”. It said overdoses of pain relievers cause more deaths than heroin and cocaine combined.
It is long overdue that recreational drugs are legalised and public resources are put in to education and cleaning up of the drugs trade. People take prescription drugs without care for what they do to their own physiology. They just pop a pill (or give their child ritaand feel better without consideration for the medium to log term effects. It is the McDonalds consumer culture but with very powerful, space age technology drugs, instead of MSG burgers.
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