Are We Really Doing No Harm?

Drugs in America 2011
WHO, WHAT & WHY?

For the first time in history, more people died last year from accidental overdose of prescription drugs than from accidental overdose of illegal drugs.

Approximately 3,000 times a month a person presents in an emergency room in the United States dead from drug overdose - usually, young, very often middle class, and almost always by accident, not suicide. Hundreds of people a day present in an emergency room who will live but could have died from drug overdose. Every medical professional will do their best for that patient once they are in the ER. But do they know: Why are they there? When did they start using? Could someone have stopped them? Where did they get the drugs?

Many of these patients never got their drugs from a "dope peddler” in fact; medical professionals were often the inadvertent source of the drugs. These patients got their drugs from medicine chests that most often have drugs sitting in them having been obtained via prescription from a medical professional. How long are we going to let this epidemic of accidental deaths run rampant in the U. S.? Why are kids with an average first-use age of 12-13 using drugs and alcohol? If we were seeing 3,000 people die a month from mesothelioma, there would be a national uproar about asbestos. Today, we are facing what may be the most devastating public health problem of the modern age and we are not talking seriously about it.

Every time a patient dies from a prescription drug overdose, can we all, including medical professionals, look ourselves in the mirror and say “we tried our best?” “First, do no harm” is believed by most physicians and medical professionals around the world to be the most important, fundamental principal of medical ethics. Don’t we have a moral and ethical obligation to do no harm to our society as a whole, as well as to the individual patient presenting to us?

The Drug World of 2011 - our children’s world - is completely different than the world we knew. Kids start much younger than our generation and unlike the old days when it was the “good kids” and a few “druggies” - the current generation exhibits a prevailing pressure on middle school and high school kids today to “do drugs”.

Each year Bob Stutman speaks to thousands of parents and students and works with hundreds of administrators, communities and medical professionals bringing to the forefront the best research and knowledge available organizing and enhancing the information with clarity and purpose to assure that his audience can understand, relate and utilize the results showing us what we’re up against and how we can empower and protect our families and work environment from, what he believes, to be the greatest health issue in our world today.