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Last week I posted a blog about the 15,000 people who die in nursing homes every year because they were given Zyprexa by their nursing home caregivers. Now that more at-home caregivers are learning about the dangers of Zyprexa, we hope they’re getting their loved ones into a medical drug detox program to get them off the drug safely before it’s too late.

But, you know, it occurred to me that if we want to kill off Americans, prescription drug addiction and dependency is probably one of the most economical ways to do it. It probably costs a lot less than going to war, for example.

Let’s see … so far, Iraq has cost the American taxpayer nearly $500 billion – that’s about $125 million per death, and in 3 ½ years in Iraq we’ve only managed to kill about one-quarter of the number of people that we kill in nursing homes with Zyprexa every year! Wow, that’s not very efficient.

Oh, wait a minute, we also got rid of one really bad guy with the Iraq money, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, some soldiers who were defending their country and lots of innocent bystanders – so, per death, it probably comes to a lot less that $125 million.

But, still, war costs a lot more than prescription drugs. We spend about $200 million every year just on bullets, and one Abrams tank costs about $4.35 million. We have about 8,000 of them.

That’s got to be a lot more expensive that killing us off with prescription drugs!

Let me see … I don’t know how much Eli Lilly spent on Viva Zyprexa, one of the campaigns that promoted Zyprexa for dementia and other off-label uses, but it apparently resulted in about 49,000 new prescriptions, which would earn Eli Lilly nearly $400 million if every one of those prescriptions went on for a year – they could afford to kill a lot more Americans with that $400 million.

Best of all, the expenses are paid by the drug companies – it doesn’t cost the American taxpayer a cent. Oh, wait, there is the cost of funerals. Oh, yeah, and there’s the cost of drug detox and rehab for those misfires that we don’t manage to kill. Still, it’s probably not as expensive as going to war.

Okay. Enough kidding around. But, you know what, it’s really no joke. Prescription drug addiction and dependency is now as big a problem as illegal drugs. Wise up.

You can start by getting your parent or loved one who’s diagnosed with dementia into a drug detox program to get them safely off the drug. Then get them a real medical physical and find if their dementia symptoms may be caused by real physical problems, as many are. Then start looking at other non-deadly solutions.

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