Law in Contemporary Society

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OverPrescriptionAsNormalcy 6 - 04 Apr 2012 - Main.HarryKhanna
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Over-Prescription as Normalcy

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 The article’s discussion of the dangers inherent in over-prescription retains a focus on “crooked doctors, street-level drug dealers, and doctor-shopping addicts”. Little attention is paid to the addiction that rages within the employed upper-middle class. This focus perpetuates the stereotype that drug problems are confined to a particular subset of society that doesn’t include ‘us’.
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<		This drug problem extends to law school; indeed, it often starts there. The use of caffeine and alcohol for coping with work and social situations is normalized and embraced. After all, who would knock a good cup of joe and rum and coke? A person who does that would be stigmatized as a radical for not self-medicating daily.
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>		This drug problem extends to law school and often starts there. The use of caffeine and alcohol for coping with work and social situations is normalized and embraced. After all, who would knock a good cup of joe and rum and coke? A person who does that would be stigmatized as a radical for not self-medicating daily.
 Self-medication – through prescription drugs, alcohol and caffeine – is pervasive in the legal profession. It is used to disassociate from the ‘soul splitting’ to cope with the times when a lawyer is working on a deal that will ruin the lives of thousands of people. Dependency on these substances to cope with moral compromise and cognitive dissonance is accepted by the profession, not rejected as an addiction.
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<		The lack of resources to truly address soul-splitting further drives the problem of self-medication and over-prescription. You will be hard-pressed to find a psychologist or therapist who is not a psychiatrist, and if you do, it won't be long before you are refered to a psychiatrist for medication. It's cheaper for the insurance company to give you pills instead of treating the problem.
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>		The lack of resources to truly address soul-splitting further drives the problem of self-medication and over-prescription. Good luck finding a psychologist or therapist who is not a psychiatrist. If you do, it won't be long before you are refered to a psychiatrist for medication. It's cheaper for the insurance company to give you pills instead of treating the problem.
 A separate but related problem is the prescription of drugs based on ties with pharmaceutical companies. It is unsettling to watch a doctor prescribe a drug while writing on a clipboard that bears the logo of that drug. There is no good reason why prescriptions for OxyContin? have gone up 82% in 3 years. The drug is notoriously abused, and according to the article, has "contributed to more deaths than any other prescription opioid there since 2006". If reform is to come, changes to the marketing practices of pharmaceutical companies are necessary.

Revision 6r6 - 04 Apr 2012 - 03:35:36 - HarryKhanna
Revision 5r5 - 04 Apr 2012 - 02:16:52 - ShefaliSingh
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