Nothing But Love :: golf blogger

I hope that you stick with me to the end and then look in your medicine cabinet or the junk drawer, wherever you keep your little blister packs of cold and flu medicine, check the ingredients, and take inventory.

I've written about this before, but I know a lot of readers of this site have young children and not-so-young children and some readers are new; and cold and flu season is in full swing in New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado (where 5 children have died), and about to strike in January in other parts of the country, which means that the cold-and-flu over-the-counter (OTC) drugs will be in the home and easily available and the subject of intensive marketing with sniffling, sneezy kiddies and cuddling, caring moms in commercials.

I saw an advertisement for Coricidin HBP, which is being touted because it allegedly does not increase blood pressure in those with hypertensive disorders.

There are a variety of types of Coricidin HBP, but several of them have dextromethorphan (DXM) as the major component; and the "Maximum Strength Flu" type, which people are likely to buy during the season, contains, along with DXM, another active ingredient called Chlorpheniramine Maleate, an antihistamine.

I don't want to steer anyone to websites that offer advice on the doses necessary to gain the maximum effect of DXM, how and where to order DXM on-line, how to distill DXM into a pure form, or what OTC products give the most bang for the buck, but those sites are out there; and even these websites attempt to steer DXM users away from Coricidin with the antihistamine because the stuff can cause brain, liver, and kidney damage and death; so, even the drug culture, in attempting to save their own from serious problems, lobbies against its use.

I can tell you from personal experience that the professionals at the treatment facility, where my teenage son went through drug rehab, were less concerned about the effects of his cocaine use that was greater than football star Lawrence Taylor's and more concerned about his abuse of Robitussin and Coricidin, checking him in his first five weeks for cognitive deficits and finally satisfying themselves that he had dodged a bullet, as sure as if he had a gun to his head and playing Russian roulette.

The problem of DXM abuse spans the globe from the death of a college kid at Illinois State University a few weeks ago to the hospitalization of a high school kid in Georgia a couple weeks ago to the recent hospitalizations for "Skittling" of two girls, 15 and 16, in Milwaukee, a teen in Evansville, Indiana, and an American teen in Seoul, Korea.

My family lives in a suburban community where the police chief refused to acknowledge that drugs were a serious problem until recently when the fourth methamphetamine lab was closed down. School administrators have underestimated drug abuse, which is open and rampant in the local high school. I imagine that my community is not dissimilar from other suburban communities, such as Waukesha, Wisconsin, around the U.S.

In the case of DXM, children need not catch a ride to the big city to find what they want, they need only go to the local Walgreen's or CVS or to your medicine cabinet or junk drawer.

And is Schering-Plough, the maker of Coricidin, and other drug-makers trying to educate the purchasers of their products about the dangers associated with the abuse of their products? You tell me. Is contributing to the Council on Family Health or "approach[ing] the Office of National Drug Control Policy enough? Or should these companies be more aggressive in their "educational campaigns?"