At least the pharmaceutical indu$try is benefiting.
"For some troops, wide use of medications can be deadly" by James Dao, New York Times / February 13, 2011
NEW YORK — After a decade of treating thousands of wounded troops, the military’s medical system is awash in prescription drugs — and the results have sometimes been deadly.
By some estimates, well over 300,000 troops have returned from Iraq or Afghanistan with post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, traumatic brain injury, or some combination of those. The Pentagon has looked to pharmacology to treat those complex problems, following the lead of civilian medicine. As a result, psychiatric drugs have been used more widely across the military than in any previous war.
But those medications, along with narcotic painkillers, are being increasingly linked to a rising tide of other problems, among them drug dependency, suicide, and fatal accidents — sometimes from the interaction of the drugs themselves....
The military medical system has struggled to meet the demand caused by two wars, and to this day it still reports shortages of therapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists. But medications have always been readily available.
But NO SHORTAGE of BULLETS, BOMBS, MISSILES, PLANES, etc!!
Across all branches, spending on psychiatric drugs has more than doubled since 2001, to $280 million in 2010, according to numbers obtained from the Defense Logistics Agency by a Cornell University psychiatrist, Richard A. Friedman....
Thousands of troops struggle with insomnia, anxiety, and chronic pain — a combination that is particularly treacherous to treat with medications. Pairing a pain medication like oxycodone, a narcotic, with an antianxiety drug like Xanax, a so-called benzodiazepine, amplifies the tranquilizing effects of both, doctors say.
Similarly, antidepressants like Prozac or Celexa block liver enzymes that help break down narcotics and anxiety drugs, extending their effects.
The widespread availability of prescription medications is increasingly being linked by military officials to growing substance abuse, particularly with opiates.
A Defense Department survey last year found that the illegal use of prescription drugs in the military had tripled from 2005 to 2008, with five times as many troops claiming to abuse prescription drugs than illegal ones like cocaine or marijuana....
Another lost drug war -- unle$$....
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