Teens ‘pharm’ for drugs
May 7, 2008
By Jim Feehan
Pill-popping teenagers, ever on the lookout for a quality, undetectable high, are abusing prescription painkillers at an alarming rate. Teen abuse of prescription painkillers is the No. 1 drug problem plaguing Newcastle and surrounding communities, a Newcastle police officer said.
“We call it farming and that’s farming with a ‘ph,” Officer Steve Johnson said of the reference to pharmaceuticals.
Some teens routinely raid their parents’ medicine cabinets or break into neighbors’ houses to pilfer painkillers, such as OxyContin or Vicodin, said Johnson, one of eight certified drug recognition experts with the King County Sheriff’s Office.
“When painkillers are out there, kids will get at them,” he said. “As far as I’m concerned, lock up your medicine cabinet or put it in a safe.”
And the abuse begins as early as when children are middle school aged, he said.
About one in five teenagers have tried prescription painkillers, such as OxyContin and Vicodin, or stimulants, like Ritalin and Adderall, to get high, according to the 2006 National Survey on Drug Use and Health conducted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The study found that more teens abused a prescription painkiller than Ecstasy, cocaine, crack or LSD.
“There is this fallacy that since it’s a pharmaceutical that it’s safe versus street drugs,” said David Jefferson, a program manager for the Washington Department of Social and Health Services’ Division of Alcohol and Substance Abuse.
In some people, prescription pain relievers can cause euphoria or feelings of well being by affecting the brain regions that mediate pleasure. This is why they’re abused, Jefferson said.
Taken as prescribed, pain relievers can manage pain effectively. But chronic use or abuse can result in physical dependence and addiction. Dependence means that the body adapts to the presence of the drug, and withdrawal symptoms occur if use is reduced or stopped, Jefferson said.
Symptoms of withdrawal include restlessness, muscle and bone pain, insomnia, diarrhea, vomiting and cold flashes with goose bumps (known as “cold turkey”).
Tolerance to a drug’s effects also occurs with long-term use, so users must take higher doses to achieve the same or similar effects as experienced initially.
Addiction is a chronic, relapsing disorder characterized by compulsive drug seeking and use, Jefferson said.
According to a recent study performed by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, the most popular prescription drug abused by teens was Vicodin, with 18 percent – or about 4.3 million youths – reporting they had used it to get high. OxyContin and drugs for attention-deficit disorder, such as Ritalin and Adderall, followed with 10 percent reporting they had tried them.
Nearly half the teens – 48 percent – said they saw “great risk” in experimenting with prescription medicines. “Ease of access” was cited as a major factor in trying the medications, with medicine cabinets at home or at friends’ homes a likely source, the survey found.
Last summer, Justin Bowlby, a 2005 graduate of Skyline High School in the Issaquah School District, died of a methadone drug overdose after abusing prescription painkillers for two years.
Bowlby’s parents said at a recent public anti-drug forum that they think that Justin’s first experience with drugs was at home, after his wisdom teeth had been extracted the summer before attending college.
Doctors gave Justin a bottle of prescription painkillers to ease the pain. Widespread availability of prescription painkillers from family medicine cabinets and from students who stole painkillers kept him hooked, his parents said.
A University of Michigan study also noted the apparent growing popularity of OxyContin among teens. Dr. Mitchell Rosenthal, head of the New York-based Phoenix House drug-treatment facility, said his agency has watched the use of painkillers by adolescents rise in recent years.
Jefferson, a drug treatment program manager for 20 years, said the number of teenagers admitted to state-sponsored treatment programs for painkiller abuse in 2000 was 210. Six years later, 455 teens were admitted to treatment programs.
Early-adult admissions – ages 18 to 21 – rose from 480 to 1,110 during that same time period, he said.
“Teens find the line between drugs that do good for you and drugs that make you feel good is becoming fuzzier every year,” Jefferson said. “This is a wake-up call to parents.”
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