Children May Become Addicted or Immune to Medicine
Surveys show that more and more teenagers are given free drug samples

While this may seem like the proper thing to do when a child is ill, giving out free sample drugs often proves to be the worst thing a doctor can do. Some of these drugs have not yet undergone extensive testing and most of them don't even have instructions on how to be used and in what quantity written either on the package, or inside it.


Cambridge Health Alliance and Hasbro Children's Hospital assigned a team of scientists to conduct a survey on how many teenagers or small children did receive free pills from caregivers. The results were unexpected. It turns out that 1 in 20 people under 18 took at least one type of free sample drugs from doctors. These drugs include Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) medication, currently black-listed and traced by the Drug Enforcement Agency due to the addictive effect, and wide-spectrum antibiotics, which can contribute to the bigger problem of drug resistance.


This resistance translates into the human body not responding to conventional antibiotics treatments. Doctors and biologists say that it's possible that in a few generations, Earth's population will become completely immune to regular drugs and that previously cured and extinct diseases might resurrect. Sarah Cutrona, internist at Cambridge Health Alliance in Massachusetts and lead author of this study says, "New medications are frequently released before their safety profile is fully understood, and samples tend to be newer medications. Free samples encourage the casual use of medications in our children before enough is known about potential harm."


This is another concern that authorities have in regard to free drug samples. Having taken many antibiotics and other pills as a child, a teenager would have no problem in casually consuming various medications or even psychoactive substances. At a psychological level, a young mind can hardly distinguish between "good" and "bad" medicine.


Ken Johnson, speaking on behalf of Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, said that most of these samples are meant for uninsured Americans. But statistics show that, in reality, only 15 percent of all samples go to the least favored of citizens. Out of those questioned in the new study, only a third had incomes below $38,000 for a family of four. It's easy to understand why the large corporations are trying to gain a "foothold" in teenagers' habits – the earlier they start taking pills, the more money the companies make.

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