American kids getting high on prescription drugs

American kids getting high on prescription drugs



BOSTON (Reuters) - When Paul Michaud's father died of cancer, the
16-year-old took OxyContin to ease his emotional pain.

He first snorted the prescription painkiller and within weeks he was
injecting it into his veins for a more powerful high before turning to
heroin as a cheaper option.

"It was the one drug that really pulled me. It took away everything,"
said Michaud, now 18, one of a new generation of American children
getting high on and addicted to prescription drugs.

Teenagers are increasingly experimenting with legal drugs like
OxyContin, widely known as "hillbilly heroin," and Vicodin, often
bought online or taken from medicine cabinets, even before trying
marijuana or alcohol, health officials say.


"Last year, painkillers were the No. 1 drug for people taking drugs
for the first time," said Nora Volkow, director of the National
Institute on Drug Abuse, an arm of the government's National
Institutes of Health.


"It's been escalating and escalating," she said. "In the past, the No.
1 drug for new initiates was marijuana."


Michaud, who attended a Boston area high school, was caught stealing
to pay for what he described as his almost instant addiction to
OxyContin -- which can cost $80 to $100 for a 40 mg pill. He was then
checked into a drug and alcohol clinic.


He has since been in and out of rehab programs six times.


"It destroyed my life pretty much. I haven't seen any of my teenage
years," he said from the Phoenix House, a clinic in the western
Massachusetts city of Springfield, where he says he has been clean for
50 days.


Michaud is not alone. Last year's Monitoring the Future study,
produced jointly by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the
University of Michigan, found a 38-percent rise in abuse of OxyContin
among 18-year-olds between 2002 and 2005.


While overall drug use dropped 19 percent over the past four years,
about one in 10 teenagers were abusing prescription drugs, the survey
showed.


"PHARMING PARTIES"


Among the most dangerous experiments are "pharming parties" where
children meet after scouring family medicine cabinets and dumping what
they find into a bowl. They stir things up, dip in, randomly pluck
drugs out and swallow them.


"They literally do not know what they are taking," said Michael Rich,
director of the Center on Media and Child Health at Children's
Hospital in Boston.


"They can overdose or take medications that counteract with each other
or interact with each other in dangerous ways. When you combine the
anti-anxiety drug Klonopin for example with alcohol, they work in the
same way and can very much lower the threshold at which you stop
breathing," he said.


Volkow at the National Institute on Drug Abuse said many teens
associate prescription drugs with family doctors, and consider them
safe, or have had positive experiences with properly prescribed
medication in their early childhood.


The challenge, she said, is to control abuse without banning drugs
that do more good than harm to society. OxyContin, which is sold
generically and generates about $2 billion in annual sales, is widely
used in hospitals.


The issue grabbed public attention in Boston after the suicide in
January of 17-year-old Cameron O'Connor, who shot himself in the head
a day after taking Klonopin. His death in Boston's middle-class
Arlington suburb triggered calls for better ways to detect teen abuse
of prescription drugs.


Teenagers are not the only prescription drug abusers. The number of
people over the age of 55 treated for abuse of opiates, for example,
has nearly doubled between 1995 and 2002, government statistics show.
In 2003, conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh admitted becoming
hooked on OxyContin.


"We're also seeing an increase in the use of these drugs in young
adults," said Lloyd Johnston, lead investigator at Michigan's
Institute for Social Research, which researches the government's
700-page Monitoring the Future study.
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Ilena wrote in message ...
American kids getting high on prescription drugs


So what do you propose should be done about all this, Ilena? Sure, drug
abuse is a problem. What does this have to do with mha? Why post it here?
--


--Rich

Recommended websites:

http://www.ratbags.com/rsoles
http://www.acahf.org.au
http://www.quackwatch.org/
http://www.skeptic.com/
http://www.csicop.org/

"Rich" wrote in message
...

Ilena wrote in message
...
American kids getting high on prescription drugs


So what do you propose should be done about all this, Ilena? Sure, drug
abuse is a problem. What does this have to do with mha? Why post it here?
--


--Rich


it shows the real nature of pharma med (1.5 million benzo addicts UK) and
the need to use nutrients which don't have these problems, quite aprt from
the drug pusing of the drug companies by inventing diseases such ADHD
http://www.adhdfraud.com/

"john" wrote in message
...

"Rich" wrote in message
...

Ilena wrote in message
...
American kids getting high on prescription drugs


So what do you propose should be done about all this, Ilena? Sure, drug
abuse is a problem. What does this have to do with mha? Why post it here?
--


--Rich


it shows the real nature of pharma med (1.5 million benzo addicts UK) and
the need to use nutrients which don't have these problems, quite aprt from
the drug pusing of the drug companies by inventing diseases such ADHD
http://www.adhdfraud.com/

So if you come to my emergency room with a broken leg, you want some
nutrients instead of narcotics? It's a deal. By the way, ADHD medications
are not "benzo's."
--


--Rich

Recommended websites:

http://www.ratbags.com/rsoles
http://www.acahf.org.au
http://www.quackwatch.org/
http://www.skeptic.com/
http://www.csicop.org/

"Rich" wrote in message
...


So if you come to my emergency room with a broken leg, you want some
nutrients instead of narcotics? It's a deal. By the way, ADHD medications
are not "benzo's."

Pharma is good for trauma med.

it was benzos, now the next round of addictive drugs are the ritalin lot

see how it works?

"john" wrote in message
...

"Rich" wrote in message
...


So if you come to my emergency room with a broken leg, you want some
nutrients instead of narcotics? It's a deal. By the way, ADHD medications
are not "benzo's."

Pharma is good for trauma med.

it was benzos, now the next round of addictive drugs are the ritalin lot

see how it works?

How it works? ADHD drugs are not addictive when taken as prescribed. In
fact, when taken as prescribed, they decrease drug abuse in people with
ADHD.

Jeff

"Rich" wrote in message
...

"john" wrote in message
...

"Rich" wrote in message
...

Ilena wrote in message
...
American kids getting high on prescription drugs


So what do you propose should be done about all this, Ilena? Sure, drug
abuse is a problem. What does this have to do with mha? Why post it
here?

Why not?


--


--Rich


it shows the real nature of pharma med (1.5 million benzo addicts UK) and
the need to use nutrients which don't have these problems, quite aprt
from the drug pusing of the drug companies by inventing diseases such
ADHD http://www.adhdfraud.com/

So if you come to my emergency room with a broken leg, you want some
nutrients instead of narcotics? It's a deal. By the way, ADHD medications
are not "benzo's."

I think you skipped right over the point.

In FACT ADHD medications are now going to have *black box* warnings.

This is what is given to kids as young as age two and three.


--


--Rich

"Jan Drew" wrote in message
om...

"Rich" wrote in message
...

"john" wrote in message
...

"Rich" wrote in message
...

Ilena wrote in message
...
American kids getting high on prescription drugs


So what do you propose should be done about all this, Ilena? Sure, drug
abuse is a problem. What does this have to do with mha? Why post it
here?

Why not?


--


--Rich


it shows the real nature of pharma med (1.5 million benzo addicts UK)
and the need to use nutrients which don't have these problems, quite
aprt from the drug pusing of the drug companies by inventing diseases
such ADHD http://www.adhdfraud.com/

So if you come to my emergency room with a broken leg, you want some
nutrients instead of narcotics? It's a deal. By the way, ADHD medications
are not "benzo's."

I think you skipped right over the point.

In FACT ADHD medications are now going to have *black box* warnings.

This is what is given to kids as young as age two and three.


So what's that got to do with people abusing prescription narcotics?
--


--Rich

Recommended websites:

http://www.ratbags.com/rsoles
http://www.acahf.org.au
http://www.quackwatch.org/
http://www.skeptic.com/
http://www.csicop.org/

"john" wrote in message
...

"Rich" wrote in message
...

Ilena wrote in message
...
American kids getting high on prescription drugs


So what do you propose should be done about all this, Ilena? Sure, drug
abuse is a problem. What does this have to do with mha? Why post it here?
--


--Rich


it shows the real nature of pharma med (1.5 million benzo addicts UK) and
the need to use nutrients which don't have these problems, quite aprt from
the drug pusing of the drug companies by inventing diseases such ADHD
http://www.adhdfraud.com/

No, it does not. It shows real human nature, which includes getting addicted
to drugs of abuse.

Jeff

"Jeff" wrote in message
ink.net...

"john" wrote in message
...

"Rich" wrote in message
...

Ilena wrote in message
...
American kids getting high on prescription drugs


So what do you propose should be done about all this, Ilena? Sure, drug
abuse is a problem. What does this have to do with mha? Why post it
here?
--


--Rich


it shows the real nature of pharma med (1.5 million benzo addicts UK) and
the need to use nutrients which don't have these problems, quite aprt
from the drug pusing of the drug companies by inventing diseases such
ADHD http://www.adhdfraud.com/

No, it does not. It shows real human nature, which includes getting
addicted to drugs of abuse.

Jeff

Quite wrong.

It show the INCREASE of American kids getting high on prescription drugs,
because they are DRUGGED starting early as young as age two, FILLING THE
BRAIN FULL OF CHEMICALS BEFORE IT IS DEVELOPED.

This comes form the INSANITY of the *organized medicine* and drug companies,
for the sole purpose of GETTING RICH.

Next it shows that the parents are also replying on DRUGS and the medicine
cabinets are full, where the teenagers have full access. Americans have
done away with GOD and have been fooled by Satan and must reach for a pill.
We have been taught to believe the LIE to reply on DRUGS and thrown GOD and
his son JESUS CHRIST out.

Americans are reaping what they have sown.

The fools on the newsgroup are a fine example.

And, btw, What does Rich propose should be done about it?

Any than harass?