TEENAGERS STILL RAIDING THE MEDICINE CHEST AT HOME

Junior's Been Helping Himself To Mother's Little Helper

That's the conclusion of a report released Wednesday by White House
drug czar John Walters that found while teenagers' use of marijuana is
declining, their abuse of prescription drugs is holding steady or in
some cases increasing.

"The drug dealer is us," said Walters, the national drug policy
director, who released the report Wednesday at a news conference in
New York. "We have to have a response that keeps that very important
fact in mind."

Teens who are being treated for prescription drug addiction agreed.
"It's available and you can get high off of it," said Michael Robin, a
17-year-old who is being treated for addiction to drugs including
Xanax and OxyContin at a Phoenix House facility on Long Island.

Walters said in some cases teens use the Internet to obtain drugs or
to visit Web sites that provide what purport to be instructions for
taking safe amounts of various prescription drugs. Victoria
Winebarger, a therapist at the Pathway Family Center in Southfield,
Mich., said some of her clients have also used the Internet to
research symptoms of conditions including depression and attention
deficit hyperactivity disorder so that they can get a doctor to
prescribe drugs for them.

"That's not uncommon," she said. According to an analysis of national
drug surveys prepared by Walters' office, 2.1 million teenagers abused
prescription drugs in 2005, the last year for which figures are
available. While their use of marijuana declined from 30.1 percent to
25.8 percent from 2002 to 2006, use of OxyContin, a painkiller,
increased from 2.7 percent to 3.5 percent over the same period. Use of
Vicodin, another pain reliever, increased slightly from 6 percent to
6.3 percent.

Teens are abusing pain relievers as well as stimulants like Adderall
and anti-anxiety drugs like Xanax because they are readily available
and perceived as safer than street drugs, Walters said. "Fifty-seven
percent of them say they get them free from friends or they take them
out of somebody's medicine cabinet," Walters said in a telephone
interview Tuesday.

The report is based on the 2005 National Survey on Drug Use and
Health, a survey of 68,308 families, and the 2005 Monitoring the
Future Survey of 50,000 eighth, 10th and 12th graders conducted by the
University of Michigan. According to the National Survey on Drug Use
and Health, marijuana use is still more common than prescription drug
abuse among youths 12 to 17 years old.

Three percent, or 840,000, of 12-to-17-year-olds said they had abused
prescription drugs in the past month, compared with 7 percent who had
used marijuana. The Monitoring the Future Survey found that the list
of drugs abused by 12th graders was headed by marijuana, with 31.5
percent reporting they had used it in the past year. The rest of the
top five were prescription drugs -- Vicodin, amphetamines, cough
medicine, and sedatives and tranquilizers.

Teenagers and drug counselors said the popularity of prescription
drugs is fed by the belief that they are less risky than street drugs.
"It seemed a lot safer because I knew what they were putting in them,"
said Sara Johnson, a 16-year-old who is being treated for drug
addiction at the Pathway Family Center in Southfield, Mich. Johnson,
who planned to attend Wednesday's news conference in New York, said
she abused drugs including Xanax and Adderall before bottoming out and
going into treatment.

"I would ask people, 'Oh, do your parents have any painkillers at the
house?"' she said. "'Or do they use Adderall?' It was really easy
after a while." Dr. Terry Horton, the medical director of Phoenix
House, which operates nearly 100 substance abuse programs in nine
states, said the belief that prescription drugs are safer than street
drugs is false. "These medicines cause dependence and addiction when
misused and have the potential to cause death," he said.

"We're talking about medicines that are related, pharmacologically, to
heroin and have very similar effects." Walters said adults should keep
track of prescription drugs and throw them out when they expire.

"People just aren't aware that they need to be careful, and so they
leave prescriptions in the medicine cabinet and they don't think
anything about it," he said.

"Once you tell them there is a hazard here, there are easy steps to
take to put these things in a safe place, to monitor them and also to
toss them once you've used them."