Social Responsibility? Uh?

Maybe it's because I am a Journalism major and I know that companies throw around the term of social responsibility, but I love to see companies get called out for not being socially responsible.

Kelli Mathews blogged about Consumers International (CI), the international federation of consumer advocacy groups, announcing the winners of its annual International Bad Product Awards.

To view her blog, and the complete list of companies mentioned, click here.

I want to talk about the top prize winner, Takeda Pharmaceuticals.

Takeda won the top prize for taking advantage of poor US regulation by advertising sleeping pills to children, despite health warnings about pediatric use.

The funny thing about this is, I can't decide who is to blame, the pharmaceutical company or the American society who gives their children sleeping pills. So I am going to blame both, starting with Takeda.

Takeda has to take responsibility for their actions. Even though it's ultimately up to the parents to decide what medications their children take, it doesn't make it right for Takeda to advertise sleeping pills to children. People look up to pharmaceutical companies and expect them to offer products that are going to protect their families, not hurt them just to make profit. For this reason, I believe pharmaceutical companies are more responsible for endangering the health of children by focusing to much on the bottom line.

Richard Lloyd, Director General of CI said this:

"These multi-billion dollar companies are global brands with a responsibility to be honest, accountable and responsible. In highlighting their short-comings Consumers International and its 220 member organizations are holding corporations to account and demanding businesses take social responsibility seriously."

Now lets talk about the parents. Even though I believe pharmaceutical companies are more responsible, it doesn't make the parents any less guilty. Parents need to educate themselves on the dangers of medications. To many time I see and hear about parents trying resolve all their child's problems with medication. Adderall might as well sit on the shelf next to children's Tylenol and Advil as much as it's used today. But, since we have a drug to calm them down we might as well have a drug to put them to sleep because everyone knows that parents don't usually have a hard time putting their kids to bed and if your kid is restless at night he/she clearly needs medication.

Hopefully you are like me and thinking to yourself how stupid that sounds. We all need to take responsibility for our actions. Being a pharmaceutical company isn't all that different from being a parent. Their actions affect other people, but one can only hope that a pharmaceutical company's action would affect us in positive, not negative, way.