Marijuana.com

Lit_Match

Abuse of cough syrup, Rx drugs up
12.22.06||LARA JAKES JORDAN

Teenagers increasingly are getting high with legal drugs like painkillers and mood stimulants, and they're turning to cough syrup as well, says a government survey released Thursday.

The annual study by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, conducted by the University of Michigan, showed mixed results in the nation's longtime campaign against teen drug abuse.

It found that while fewer teens overall drank alcohol or used illegal drugs in the last year, a small but growing number are popping prescription painkillers like OxyContin and Vicodin and stimulants like Ritalin.

As many as one in every 14 high school seniors said they used cold medicine "fairly recently" to get high, the study found.

It was the first year that the government tracked the frequency of teens who reported getting high from over-the-counter cold medicine.

The study found that about 1 in 10 high school seniors have abused the painkiller Vicodin. John Walters, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, said kids may be pilfering the pills from their parents' medicine cabinets.

Walters credited public service advertising with a steady decrease in overall teen drug use over the past five years and said the agency would shift some of its 2007 advertising budget toward combating prescription drug abuse.

The rise in prescription drug abuse was a troubling conclusion in a study that Walters described as good news overall because of the drop in teen use of alcohol, cigarettes, marijuana and other illicit substances. An estimated 840,000 fewer teens reported using illegal drugs now compared to five years ago, he said.

The study surveyed 50,000 students in the eighth, 10th and 12th grades at more than 400 schools nationwide.

The number of teens who got high from medicines and households items instead of illegal drugs was relatively small, according to the study. They included:

• Nearly 10 percent of high school seniors admitted to using excessive dosages of Vicodin, a slight increase over the last year.

• Nine percent of eighth graders sniffed glue, spray paints, cleaning fluids or other inhalants, down slightly.

• 3.6 percent of 10th-graders got high off Ritalin, up two-tenths of 1 percent. Ritalin is used normally to combat effects of attention deficit disorder.

Study Results

• Illegal drug use at all three grade levels dropped, if only slightly. An estimated 36.5 percent of high school seniors reported using illicit drugs at some point in the year.

• Marijuana remained the single most abused illicit drug among teens, although its use also dropped slightly within all three grades.

• One-third of eighth-graders said they had consumed alcoholic beverages, compared to more than a half of 10th-graders and two-thirds of seniors surveyed. That also was a small decrease among the three grade levels.

 

SirSmokaALot

It's funny how adults are always concerned about teens abusing drugs overall... but it'll always exist because they're bunch of adventurous young people and you expect teens to stay at home to sit around or play sports (although not all teens enjoy running around for nothing) I mean... why cant they just like limit minor's uses to weekends only so that way they cant use it any day during school week (Which most likely will affects their learning capabilities *if they used during school nights*). Instead of trying to ban all uses among teenagers because i highly doubt that any teens will listen to you people in our lifetime... Why cant they just change their course... like spreading the REAL facts among teenagers and maybe that will make most of them not want to do any until they turn 18 but that's usually rare because there always will be people around telling younger people how it's feels like being high or drunk. Temptation's always will be surrounding young people... so this battle is just simply useless unless you teach these minors important facts instead of lies then just maybe they'll reconsider their behavior....

Edit: or they might as well suggest that teens to smoke reefer instead of taking over-counter/stealing cough syrup/pills to reduce their chances of damaging brain cells?