Not to mention driving under the influence—and murder.
Earlier this month, Robert O’Neill, the (now retired) Navy SEAL who claims to have shot and killed Osama bin Laden, was arrested for driving under the influence in his home state of Montana. In a statement to USA Today, O’Neill said he had not been drinking and driving, but had taken a prescribed sleep aid to deal with long-standing insomnia.
As more and more people take these strong and often toxic sleeping pills, such stories will only proliferate. Recall our past coverage of Robert Stewart storming into a nursing home where his estranged wife worked and killing eight people. His defense was that he was under the influence of Ambien, one of the most common sleep aids, and therefore not in control of his actions.
In 2013, US Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales was sentenced to life in prison without parole for the killing of sixteen Afghan civilians. He had admitted to regularly using sleeping pills and drinking alcohol.
The dangerous effects of sleeping pills are known to both drug companies and the FDA. The information sheets dispensed with the sleeping aids like Ambien state, in small print, that medications in this class have occasional side effects like sleepwalking, “abnormal thinking,” and “strange behavior.”
Ambien users even sued the manufacturer because of bizarre sleep-eating behaviors while on the drugs. People were eating things like buttered cigarettes and eggs, complete with the shells, while under the influence of Ambien. An attorney called people in this state “Ambien zombies.”
Other studies have shown that sleeping pills bring an increased risk of dying early or getting cancer. Another recent study showed that anticholinergic medicines sold as over-the-counter sleep aids are associated with cognitive impairment and an increased risk of dementia.
Because of the many side effects associated with Ambien, the FDA seems to be extremely cautious about approving future sleeping drugs. As we’ve argued before, the FDA approval process for sleeping pills is something of a façade: the clinical trials required for sleeping pills such as Ambien investigate the drug’s effectiveness only for the short-term—and they are approved only for short-term use, when in reality people take them for years. What is far worse is the safety review, which is clearly inadequate.
The FDA has no apparent problem approving drugs that cause people to crash cars, eat buttered cigarettes, and perhaps even commit violent acts, but actively works to restrict consumer access to natural medications that have a superb safety record as well as effectiveness. As we’ve said many times before—the FDA’s hostility toward supplements and natural medicine has almost nothing to do with safety and much more to do with ensuring bumper profits for Big Pharma.
Other articles in this week’s Pulse of Natural Health:
Is Monsanto’s Glyphosate Actually Helping the Environment?
Seven Casualties in the War on Natural Health
Open Letter: Glyphosate Testing
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Sleeping pills ( Ambien, Lunesta, Restoril )are the number one most dangerous prescription drugs to take.
Re: FDA and Big Pharma: This, of course, explains why the FDA, in its role to “regulate tobacco”, utterly ignores cigarettes packed with residues of any of over 400 Still Legal tobacco pesticides, any number of them made by Big Pharms…Bayer, BASF, Rhone Poulenc, Syngenta, Novartis, and so on. The FDA will not call typical cigarettes “Pesticide Pegs”.
This explains why the FDA utterly ignores dioxins in smoke from typical cigarettes—because any indictment of chlorine (in typical cigs from pesticides and still legal Chlorine-Bleached paper) would negatively affect Big Pharma and its virtual Life Blood…chlorine. No…the FDA doesn’t call typical cigarettes “Dioxin Dowels”…as on-target as that may be.
The FDA also serves Big Pharm in this arena by failing to mention or, test, or ban cigarette additives like artificial sweeteners, humectants, preservatives, artificial flavors, and so forth.
The Pharm-Serving FDA, like the rest of the corporate establishment (and those who fall for their rhetoric), prefers to blame illnesses on A) the natural un-patented, conveniently “sinful” tobacco plant, and B) the unwitting, duped, unprotected, sickened, killed, and un-compensated victims.
Is there any better route to exposing and ending the FDA’s very harmful alliance with Big Pharma (and big pesticides, chlorine, and others) than by getting this “smoking related” info Out There? The agency has no credibility. Its service to Big Cig, one of the most despised industries on earth, and easily its most toxic components, makes for an exceptionally solid indictment.
Driving under the influence is not limited to the influence of alcohol. If you are driving after taking a prescription medicine prescribed by your doctor, and it affects your judgment, your reflexes or anything about your ability to drive, you are “under the influence”. It is not legal to drive in an impaired state, whether the impairment is due to alcohol, pot, or any other substance that affects the central nervous system.
Prescription sleep aids and antidepressants are very dangerous chemicals which should be tightly regulated and monitored. There are many effective natural treatments for these and many other conditions which ought to be used first. Unfortunately most medical doctors remain ignorant about these and refuse to look beyond their training in unnatural pharmaceutical chemicals.