What is Lurking in
Your Medicine Cabinet?
By Judge Susan D. Reed,
Bexar County District Attorney
Each generation seems to have their own illegal drug of choice: Marijuana in the 60’s, LSD in the 70’s, cocaine in the 80’s and ecstasy and heroin in the 90’s. Gone are the days when teens have to go to a dark alley or a street corner to get their drug of choice.
Nowadays, they don’t even have to leave their homes in order to obtain their drugs from a dealer. In fact, many teens look no further than their parents’ medicine cabinet. Raiding the family medicine cabinet even has its own slang term now: it’s called ” or “pharming.”
Today our teens are experimenting with prescription drugs and are more likely to abuse prescription drugs than they are to use illegal street drugs. What makes this situation so terrifying is that prescription drugs are safe when they are used as prescribed; however, when they are abused they can be just as dangerous and deadly as ecstasy, cocaine, heroin and LSD.
On a national basis, in 2006 9.8 percent of youths aged 12 to 17 were currently using illicit drugs; 6.7 percent used marijuana, 3.3 percent engaged in the illegal use of prescription-type drugs, 1.3 percent used inhalants, 0.7 percent used hallucinogens and 0.4 percent used cocaine.
Thus, the misuse of prescription-type drugs was second only to marijuana in prevalence. When looking at the use of illicit drugs during the last month, the rates and types varied with age. Among 12 to 13-year-olds, 2 percent illegally used prescription-type drugs, 1.2 percent used inhalants and 0.9 percent used marijuana.
Among 14 to 15-year-olds, marijuana was the dominant drug used (5.8 percent), followed by the illegal use of prescription drugs (3.1 percent) and then inhalants (1.7 percent). Marijuana also was the most commonly used drug among 16 to 17-year-olds (13 percent) followed by illegally used prescription-type drugs (4.7 percent) then hallucinogens (1.3 percent), inhalants (1.1 percent) and cocaine (0.8 percent).
In fact, 9 percent of twelfth graders took narcotics such as OxyContin and Vicodin, and the lifetime prevalence rates for amphetamine use without a doctor’s prescription were 7.3 percent for eighth graders, 11.2 percent for tenth graders and 12.4 percent for twelfth graders.
As many as one in five children between the ages of 12 to 17 (nearly 4.4 million nationwide) admit taking prescription painkillers such as Vicodin at least once in the past year and one in 10 (nearly 2.3 million) reported taking a prescription stimulant like Ritalin. Teens now are starting to abuse drugs at an average age between 13 and 14-years-old. Unfortunately, the younger a teen starts using these prescription drugs, the more likely he or she will develop a drug habit.
In Texas, the situation is no different; 6 percent of secondary school students indicated a lifetime use of “uppers” whereas the past-month use at the time the survey was taken in 2006 was 25 percent.
The lifetime use of “downers” was 6 percent, with past-month use at 36 percent. Poison control centers in Texas reported that the numbers of cases involving abuse or misuse of Coricidin HBP were seven in 1998, 189 in 2005 and 567 in 2006 with the average age being 16. This demonstrates that our teens can easily access and misuse this substance.
And to bring it home, within Bexar County my office has seen a significant increase in the illegal use of prescription drugs by teens within the past year. The most prevalent prescription drugs are Xanax, Hydrocodone, Seroquel and Adderall, in that order.
However, the largest area of concern in dealing with this illegal use of prescription drugs is that in 2006, an estimated 1.5 million people under the age of 18 used an illicit drug for the first time within the past 12 months. This averages approximately 4,000 initiates per day. The specific drug categories with the largest number of recent initiates among persons aged 12 or older were illegal use of pain relievers (2.2 million), marijuana use (2.1 million), 1.1 million for tranquilizers, 845,000 for stimulants and 267,000 for sedatives.
Research confirms that teens who started using drugs early are more likely to continue using drugs as they get older. The flip side is those individuals who do not use drugs during their teenage years are less likely to start using later in life. To be successful in curtailing illegal drug use, we need to keep teens from starting down this path of destruction.
However, a typical teen using prescription drugs illegally thinks these drugs can’t be bad. After all, they are legal. It is not like they are using ecstasy, cocaine, crack, heroin or LSD. And as we know, when these prescription drugs are properly prescribed and taken as directed, they can safely relieve pain, ease anxiety and increase attention and energy. But taking such powerful drugs without supervision or mixing them with others, including alcohol, can be a recipe for disaster. It goes without saying the dangers are life threatening in both the short and long run.
The numbers of our teens who intentionally abuse prescription drugs leaves no doubt that illegal prescription drug use is a real problem which is threatening the health and lives of our teens. And with this illegal use of prescription drugs, we are now facing a different kind of threat, a threat that is not found in a dark alley or on a street corner, but in our medicine cabinets.
Why have prescription drugs become an alternative to illicit drug use? The perception is that they are safe. Two in five teens (40 percent or 9.4 million) believe that prescription drugs, even if they were not prescribed by a doctor, are much safer than illegal drugs. In fact, nearly one-third of teens (31 percent or 7.3 million) believe there is nothing wrong with using prescription drugs without a prescription once in a while.
Nearly three out of 10 teens (29 percent or 6.8 million) believe prescription pain relievers, even if they are not prescribed by a doctor, are not addictive. The reasoning behind controlling these drugs through prescriptions is lost on them.
More than half the teens who illegally use prescription drugs said they obtained the drugs they used from a friend or a relative for free. Another 9.3 percent bought the drugs from a friend or a family member. And around one fifth (19.1 percent) reported they got the drugs from just one doctor. When asked, teens said the primary reasons for abusing prescription drugs are their widespread availability and easy access. Sixty-two percent stated they could easily get drugs from their parents’ medicine cabinets, while 52 percent said that they were available everywhere and 50 percent said it was easy to get them through other people’s prescriptions.
What really is amazing is that 51 percent did not believe that the illicit use of prescription drugs was illegal. Basically, teens believe that prescription drugs are inexpensive, easily accessible and mistakenly perceived as safe because they are prescription drugs and considered legal. As physicians are aware, when prescription drugs are used in a manner which is not intended, they are just as dangerous and deadly as any illegal drug.
In this war against drugs, parents have the most influence with their teens when it comes to curtailing the use of illegal drugs. According to teens, upsetting their parents or losing their parents’ respect is one of the main reasons why they don’t use drugs.
The illicit use of prescription drugs should be no exception. As more adults start using prescription drugs for pain relief, anxiety and depression, our teens can easily obtain whatever drugs are in our medicine cabinets. Please remember, they too see the television ads we see about the “virtues” of various prescriptions.
What can physicians do? They can warn their patients about the dangers of the illicit use of prescriptions drugs, educate them about the types of prescription drugs teens are abusing, ask their patients to communicate with their kids and explain to them that these prescription drugs can not be safely abused, stress to their patients to safeguard their medicines by limiting access to them, and keep track of the quantities they have in their home.
Most importantly, physicians should ask parents to properly and safely dispose of unused pills when they are no longer needed.
As the numbers have shown, today’s teens are more likely to abuse prescription drugs than a variety of illegal drugs like ecstasy, cocaine, crack and methamphetamine. Our teens are dead wrong if they think that the illegal use of prescription drugs is safe, and we’ve got to do a better job of teaching our kids and parents about the dangers of prescription drug abuse.
Let’s all work together to keep the drugs you prescribe from “lurking” in our medicine cabinets.
The Hon. Susan D. Reed was elected District Attorney of Bexar County in 1989, as the county’s first female DA. She is a valued contributor to San Antonio Medicine, advising BCMS physicians of pertinent news that links medicine and the law.
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Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Results from the 2006 National Survey on Drug Use and Health: National Findings, September 2007. page 50.
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Partnership for a Drug-Free America, 2005 Partnership Attitude Tracking Study (PATS), www.drugfree.org/ General/Articles/
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Partnership for a Drug-Free America, 2005 Partnership Attitude Tracking Study (PATS), www.drugfree.org/ General/Articles/
Partnership for a Drug-Free America, 2005 Partnership Attitude Tracking Study (PATS), www.drugfree.org/ General/Articles/
Partnership for a Drug-Free America, 2002 Partnership Attitude Tracking Study (PATS), www.drugfree.org/Files/ Full_Report_PATS_2003_Teens
