Yep. The reason is money (isn't it always). The doctors get money whenever they prescribe something, the AMA gets kickbacks from the drug companies for approving drugs, there's no check and balance. It's all bullshit.
My favorite is Paxil (turned a nice friend of mine into a total ASSHOLE), prescribed because you have "social anxiety" and can't make friends, what the fuck ever!
Then there's Adderall and similar ADD meds that are nothing but legalized amphetamines.
There's a lot of kids out there on Adderall and barbituates, the drugs tell them when to wake up and when to go to sleep, that is, IF their white trash foster families aren't stealing the drugs. It's all a result of our quick-fix society. Have heartburn? Maybe you should drink some milk or eat less spicy foods and more healthy foods instead of popping pretty purple Nexiums, shit they look like skittles!
It is a joke, and no one has the power to stop it. Actually, not many people actually realize how convoluted the process is, they just trust their doctor to make the correct diagnosis and prescribe something to fix it.
106,000 patients died in the US in 1998 because of adverse reactions to medication.
To put this into perspective, that year only 30,575 died as a result of suicide, and there were only 18,272 homicides.
For the record, there has never been a case of marijuana alone causing an overdose death.