T-shirts with drug names are 'cynical effort,' say three state attorneys general
Attorneys general from Florida, Maine and Kentucky are asking a clothing company to stop selling T-shirts emblazoned with the names of often-abused prescription drugs.
The T-shirts made by Kitson Inc. display the words Xanax, Vicodin and Adderall, report the Orlando Sentinel and the Associated Press. The company says its T-shirts are a parody of pop culture, but the attorneys general weren’t laughing. “Prescription drug abuse is not fun or humorous,” the attorneys general said.
The drug T-shirts sell for $58 for short sleeves and $98 for long sleeves, the Sentinel says.
The company defended the T-shirt in a statement. “The T-shirts are simply a mirror of what is occurring in our culture,” the statement said. “Perhaps more discussion about those whose behavior truly contributes to the deaths every 19 minutes from prescription drugs, those who provide the opportunity for prescription drugs to fall into the hands of our youth, and those who flood the market with the ads, would be a more salient topic.”
The attorneys general saw another motive. Marketing the shirts with the tagline “pop one and you’ll feel better” demonstrates “not an interest in educating the public about the dangers of prescription drug abuse but rather a most cynical effort to profit on the backs of the thousands of lives lost to this epidemic,” they wrote.
