Prescription drug sales, consumer use, legislative changes
The LA Times offers a multipart series on prescription drugs, the way they are marketed, our dependence, physicians who give them out too often and possible legislation that questions the drug companys' powerful influences.
From the intro:
Today, drug manufacturers do everything in their considerable power to ensure that their brand-name prescription medications are on the lips of patients and in the minds of physicians every time the two meet across an exam table. A growing chorus of critics says their efforts have begun to rewrite the dialogue between patient and doctor, influence physicians' judgments and open the act of prescribing to forces more profit-minded than sacred.In 2006, drug-makers spent almost $5 billion to reach out to consumers with direct advertising.