Professor of Social Welfare David Cohen was featured on the Mikhaila Peterson podcast as a guest speaker on the dangers of psychiatric medication, dependency and withdrawal. Cohen pointed out that the prescription rates for psychoactive drugs have quintupled in North America in the last 40 years. Prescriptions for children have increased even more, even though the long-term effects of psychoactive drug use not fully understood. “No one seems to be responsibly investigating these questions, despite the large number of citizens who take psychoactive drugs,” Cohen said. While psychoactive drug use is not new, the avalanche of modern synthesized psychotropics and corporate pharmaceutical promotion have served as converging factors increasing societal dependence on psychoactive drugs. “The cautions that we might feel as ordinary citizens about long-term use are short-circuited by the ideas that many of us are deficient or suffer from some pre-existing brain abnormality that requires treatment with drugs,” he said.