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Below is a thoughtful article sent to us by email, now reproduced here in the public interest:

We are a nation of pill-poppers

Sue Dunlevy
From: Herald Sun
April 05, 2010 12:00AM

Expensive habit: Australians are spending over $14b on pills each year. Source: AAP

AUSTRALIA has a pill-popping obsession, consuming more than 40 million pills a day - about two a day for every man, woman and child.

Our habit is costing us $14.2 billion a year - $6.5 billion out of our own pockets - and raises the question of whether we're relying on pills rather than lifestyle to maintain health. There are 196 million prescriptions for subsidised medicines filled each year, and we are buying a further 300 million packs of headache pills, vitamins and complementary medicines.

An inquiry has found the number of pills used increased 37 per cent in the past 17 years. In 1993, Australians used 6.38 scripts a year on average. Today the figure is 8.9 scripts.

Australian Medical Association vice-president Dr Steve Hambleton said the ageing population, new medicines and a growth in chronic disease had driven the increasing use of medicine."There has been an explosion in the number of people who are diabetic. When you're diagnosed as diabetic, you go from no pills to four pills overnight," he said.

But he said advertising of medicines to treat smoking and diabetes was also driving demand. "There is pressure on doctors to prescribe something," Dr Hambleton said.

A drug company representative told him recently their drug was the most successful way to quit smoking, he said. nte "I think we have to go back to good old-fashioned focus on lifestyle."

More than two-thirds of Australians use complementary medicines such as vitamins, fish oil and glucosamine at a cost of $4 billion a year.

But National Prescribing Service chief Lyn Weekes said our combination of prescription and complementary medicines increased the risk of chemical interactions and adverse medicine reactions.

Dr Hambleton said many people were unaware using St John's Wort for depression could stop the contraceptive pill from working.

Ms Weekes said the growth in medicine use is not all bad and there is a lot of strong medical evidence to back the use of medicines to prevent heart attacks and manage diabetes.

But she said there is anectdotal evidence that people are relying on pills rather than changing their eating and exercise habits to improve their health.

"Many people will think: I will eat that extra dessert but just make sure I take my statin and that's not what we enocurage people to do," she said.

'You need a good lifestyle as well as the medicine, it's about the two working together,' she said.

Even children are dependent on medicines. comThe Daily Telegraph has found that in 2007-08, Almost 10,000 were prescribed anti-psychotic medication.

Our reliance on pills does not come cheaply although many prescription medicine are subsidised Australians are still spending $6.5 billion out of their own pockets on medicines.