Pilots on Prozac
The FAA has now cleared pilots on Prozac for take off. Their reasoning is very clear. They hold that many pilots are already taking the drug to fight depression and the ban only makes them "less candid" about it. Oh boy.
So we will go the extra mile to hunt down professional athletes who use banned drugs. We'll hold congressional hearings and put both professional and amateur jocks through random drug tests to make sure their levels of hormones, caffeine or hemoglobin are not too high. But testing depressed pilots for drugs that may have life and death consequences for hundreds of people is just too hard. Huh?
Never mind if want depressed people flying passenger jets filled with hundred of innocent travelers over cities filled with millions of innocent civilians. Let's just look at the common side effects of Prozac as listed on Drugs.com and Emedtv.com:
Hallucinations, insomnia, nausea, headache, diarrhea, anxiety, loss of coordination, dizziness, tremor and my personal favorite, suicidal thoughts.
I am somewhat concerned that is seems okay to some people in high places (or high people in some places) to operate the heaviest of heavy machinery while, anxious, nauseated, depressed, hallucinating and suicidal. I'm worried about what drugs they're taking at the FAA. Somehow they must have put the ghost of Hunter S. Thompson in charge of drug policy. Uh, what could possibly go wrong here?
©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
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