Our age has been called a drug culture. Offhand, it would be impossible to estimate the amount of drug abuse in our society. At times we believe that our intense efforts and huge expenditures to curtail drug abuse are successful only to discover otherwise. However, today we are also engaged in a national debate about the medicinal use of drugs as an important part of the health care delivery system. The drug industry is under scrutiny, because of the high cost of the society's reliance upon their products. The drug companies reply that their part in the national bill for health care is fair enough. Meanwhile, a significant portion of monies paid out for drugs is not curative but for the relief of pain.

Daily the populace consumes huge doses of aspirin, barbiturates, ibuprofen, and sedativ…