Prescription Drug Abuse and Teens

Our kids are pretty smart. They've learned they don't need to head to the street to buy drugs. They can head right to the medicine cabinet in their own home. There are plenty of choices, all free! And kids perceive these drugs to be safe because they find them in their won homes. The pain medication you got after you threw out your back produces a great heroin-like high. The ADHD medication that little brother takes is a stimulant that can give you a ton of energy.

There are some pretty alarming statistics on the Partnership for a Drug Free America website.

• 1 in 5 teens has abused a prescription (Rx) pain medication
• 1 in 5 report abusing prescription stimulants and tranquilizers
• 1 in 10 has abused cough medication

Gather a group of ten kids, or better yet, look at how many kids are on your son or daughter's soccer team, in their math class, etc. About 20? Four of those kids have abused prescription drugs and two of them have abused cough medicine.

Where do kids learn about this stuff? From each other. Check out YouTube. You will be horrified at the number of stupid things you can see kids doing. I've seen videos of kids sniffing chili powder, smoking smarties, and lighting hairspray on fire.

So what do parents do?

1. Talk to your kids about the dangers of abusing drugs of all kinds. Do it when a commercial about drug abuse comes on TV. Do it when they bring materials home from school. Do it when you see an article in the paper about a kid who died from abusing drugs. It won't be easy, but it's necessary. There are plenty of scripts available for you on the Internet if you can't figure out what to say.

2. Keep drugs in your home in a safe place. My mom used to lock the medicine cabinet in my childhood home. I'm not sure this is necessary. Just make sure these drugs aren't next to the plates in the cupboard or in a medicine cabinet in a bathroom guests use.

3. Educate yourself. This should probably be point one. Websites providing information on drug abuse are bountiful. Familiarize yourself with them. Know what your kids know. If you don't know where to start, go to this website. http://www.drugfree.org.

Last, here is a story that will help you understand how important it is that you educate yourself and your family about prescription drug abuse. To summarize, a 12 year old boy addresses his class about how it felt to lose his 18 year old brother to a drug overdose when he was 9. His brother was sold a fentanyl patch, a very strong pain medication in patch form used by cancer patients. The scary thing about fentanyl is that it's so strong, if you don't have pain issues, it will kill you. You guessed it. The boy died. Here is his brother's story. http://www.drugfree.org/Memorials/Josh_Pelick

Thanks for listening and keeping your family safe.