Our friends over at the Associated Press have discovered that our drinking water is contaminated with trace amounts of dozens of medications. Everything from antibiotics to sex hormones are flowing out of your tap, and there's nothing your local water treatment plant can do about it -- if they could test for it, which they can't.
It seems that when we take our meds, we also piss a lot of it away the next day. Plus, for years, the standard procedure for disposing of old drugs was to flush them down the toilet... and in much of the country, we clean and recycle our piss and put it back into the pipes to drink again. And again. And again.
The Europeans knew this about ten years ago, but apparently it takes a while for news such as this to travel to the USA. (The AP ain't the news gathering organization it once was, it seems.)
While the people who are supposed to know say that while this is serious and we shouldn't panic, it's bad for the environment. Boy fish are showing up with female hormones, etc. Gee, last time I looked, people were part of the "environment" too, right?
I'm sure some science-fiction writer has already well-covered this idea, but let me pose it for you here in case your subscription to "Amazing Stories" has lapsed:
Our government, faced with a continuing decline in, well, everything, decides to take a page out of the Tim Leary textbook and turn on the population to manage the situation. The EPA, working with our nation's top drug companies and the surviving members of the Grateful Dead, selectively salt our drinking supply based on the needs of the nation. Hey, why not? Wouldn't this fall under "providing for the common defense" or "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"?
So, who gets what meds?
The Southwest: Birth control for slowing down the illegal immigrant birth rates. Mood stabilizers to chill out the gangs and the rising incidents of road rage on L.A. freeways.
The Midwest and and Rustbelt States: Prozac and a cocktail of other anti-depressants to let the populace ignore that American manufacturing and farming have all been exported overseas.
The Northwest: Stimulants, so that the boys on the line at Boeing, and the gang at Microsoft's Redmond campus can work 24-7 on the country's last surviving profitable products.
The Rockies and San Francisco: Remember we said the Dead were in on the project? Seems it's time for another tour.
Florida: Cardiac and stroke meds for mom and dad who retired there last year.
But back to "reality". (And how would I know? My morning coffee was made with tap water.)
If you think you can escape by drinking bottled water, good luck with that. The bottled water companies don't test their water for pharmaceuticals, either, and as much as the bottlers would like you to believe it, not all it really comes from melted glaciers or other unpolluted sources, as you might guess. So we're screwed. Have a nice day.
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