Pot times
Rx Abuse
URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v05/n1091/a13.htmlNewshawk: http://www.painreliefnetwork.org
Pubdate: Sat, 09 Jul 2005 RX ABUSE
Source: Sun-Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale, FL)
Copyright: 2005 Sun-Sentinel Company
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letters@sun-sentinel.com
Website: http://www.sun-sentinel.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/159
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/oxycontin.htm
(Oxycontin/Oxycodone)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/youth.htm
(Youth)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/opinion.htm
(Opinion)
A New Study Shows Teens Are Abusing Prescription Drugs In Record Numbers
Drug abuse among teenagers is nothing new. Since the dawn of adolescent
angst, teens have gained impressive repute for testing their invincibility with
mind-altering substances.
Now they're just craftier about it. Whether it's sniffing paint fumes out
of a paper bag or throwing back excessive doses of cough syrup, today's teens
are especially industrious in getting high.
That's why a new study on prescription drug abuse by the National Center on
Addiction and Substance Abuse may not be shocking, but it is frightening.
And it should jolt parents everywhere out of their collective blindness to the
problem.
According to a Washington Post report on the study, prescription drug abuse is
an epidemic among Americans of all ages, especially at a time when a wider
assortment of ever more powerful narcotics are being prescribed for a variety of
ailments.
But the problem is especially alarming among teens, the fastest growing segment
of users.
Of course, kids aren't getting their new drugs from their doctors, but from
their parents' medicine cabinets, from their friends and from the Internet.
It's a staggering reality that demands a serious response. Unfortunately,
police, parents, pharmacists and doctors aren't paying adequate attention.
The time has long passed when it was enough to lock the liquor cabinet and hope
for the best. Today's sophisticated times require a more sophisticated
adult response to teen drug abuse -- through better laws, stronger controls from
the medical and drug industries and firm parental vigilance.
Lock the medicine cabinet and guard the computer, but don't stop there.
BOTTOM LINE: Parents, lawmakers and the medical community must wake up and crack
down on this troubling epidemic.
