Green Tip #77: Stop Using Drugs

Yay! I'm back from vacation! Let me tell you, the best cure for writer's block is just to take a week off. I swear, I had some good ideas for Green Tips an hour after I posted the entry on Friday and I was so mad I'd have to hang on to the ideas for an entire week. So without further ado, let me finish dusting off my keyboard and let's go!

Today's Green Tip is one that you may have heard before from environmentalists. But this one is kind of like Green Tip #19: Cut Down on Shower Use. While there may be very obvious environmental benefits from doing it (saving water), The Impractical Green Resource isn't about doing what's obvious. It's about looking deeper, below the oily skin of environmental issues to the environmental subcutaneous adipose layer of humorous solutions to those issues. You see, it isn't until you get down below the papillary region, composed of loose areolar connective tissue, that you see the solution is made of cell types such as fibroblasts, macrophages and adipocytes. You know, in an environmentally metaphoric way.

Obscure and irrelevant metaphors aside, I think this overly medical metaphor for the environmental problems we face leads very well into Green Tip #77. Stop Using Drugs. No, I don't mean you need to stop smoking pot. After all, marijuana turns carbon dioxide into oxygen just like every other plant. No, I'm talking about FDA approved drugs like the ones you get from drugstores and pharmacies and Wal-Mart and that guy that stands outside the public library downtown who's always talking on his bluetooth. At least I think he's on his bluetooth. He's always talking to someone, but I never see a phone in his hand...

Anyway, the argument that many hippies has is that drugs like that are all synthetically made and could be bad for the water system if we dispose of them and they get into water works. I don't care about all that stuff. I've been to Cleveland during the 80's. I know we're putting much, much worse stuff in the water than Aspirin.

No, I'm more worried about the bureaucracy of the drug industry. Grab the nearest magazine to you. I'll wait a second.






Okay, got it? Now I can't vouch for every magazine that exists in the world, but if it's a popular one, you can probably find at least a few ads for drugs in there. If you've got an AARP magazine or a golf magazine, you've probably got some Lipitor ads in there. Good Housekeeping or Woman's Day? Most likely Boniva. Seventeen? Probably Prozac or Alli. Playboy or Maxim? Um... most likely Viagra. But you get the point. There are brand name drugs for just about every gender, race, age group, lifestyle, hair color, whatever. I'm not complaining about this. It is keeping my girlfriend employed, after all.

No, what bothers me about drugs is right in front of you. What's the one thing you notice about all the drug ads in magazines? Here's a hint: flip the page. The FDA mandates that drug ads have to be obscenely detailed and list every possible thing about the drug. Think of how much paper is wasted every year just from all those stupid warnings and side effects! I mean, what if every ad for McDonald's had to feature a 2 page write up of all the health complications you could get from eating a Big Mac? (Read more here if you're really really bored. I mean curious.)

And what about the drug commercials on TV? It seems like the normal 30 second drug ad only has time to say the name of the drug and then they list side effects for 28 seconds. Either that or they go all out and buy a minute long ad. Maybe I need some Ritalin or something, but I don't have the patience to sit through something like that. Think of all the electricity that's wasted every day just on drug ads.

So I guess I'm not saying don't take drugs at all. After all, there are generics that *SPOILER ALERT* are exactly the same as brand name drugs (and cost 1/10 of the price). If we only buy generics that don't advertise, we could save countless trees and electricity. So do your part for the environment and do the American thing (go with the really cheap option). Mother Nature will thank you.