Give us this day, our daily meds...

It seems there's now a pill for whatever ails you. Nobody can deny the explosion of available pharmaceuticals--there's a commercial in every TV segment (complete with fascinating legal disclaimers about potential side effects!), and drugstores on every corner. The oft-lamented rising health care costs are no doubt fueled at least in part by this chemical revolution. Why else would allegedly conservative Republicans see fit to create a federal drug benefit (nowhere authorized in the Constitution)?

The real question is, from Ritalin to stop boys from being boys, to Viagra to stop old men from being old men, how much good is this ever-growing witches' brew doing for us?

- There is now one drug salesperson (many with entertaining and marketing budgets that would put a high-flying media conglomerate to shame) in America for every six physicians.
- In 2004 Americans spent more on prescription drugs than they did on gas.
- Between 1980 and 2003, the amount Americans spent on prescription drugs exploded from $12 billion to $197 billion.

...it’s clear why Big Pharma no longer bothers with the low-profit vaccines and antibiotics of earlier years; why create the new penicillin when there’s more money to be made in convincing people they need a drug to help them sleep, have sex, or just plain be happy?

Without a doubt, careful research has produced many useful medicines for which we can all be thankful. It's the pill-pushing answer-to-every-problem mentality we should be wary of. Could it be that all this casual, habitual pharmakeia is really a search to fill a void? I'm not above taking aspirin or Pepto when life's little annoyances recur. But long Latin labels with strong federal controls? I'll check my other options first.