PILL PARTIES BAD BUZZ

Youngsters May Be Raiding Family Medicine Cabinet

It's common for parents with teenagers to lock the liquor cabinet --
but the medicine cabinet?

It might not be a bad idea.

Ottawa's youth are grabbing whatever prescription medication they can
find at home and bringing them to "pharm parties" or "trail mix parties."

They go by many names but there's no debate what's going on at
them.

Young people are taking prescription pills to these parties where
everyone tosses what they've got into a bag or bowl.

It gets passed around and everyone takes a pill. They might get a high
or a buzz or a trip to the emergency room.

"It's really quite scary behaviour. There is a reason why prescription
drugs are prescription drugs. They are designed to give to a person
who has a problem," said Dr. David Salisbury, chief medical officer of
Ottawa Public Health.

The most common pills are Tylenol 3s, percocets or its big brother,
the more potent oxycontin. Just one oxycontin pill can be 16 times
more powerful than a percocet.

Oxys and percs are meant to be pain relievers but they can give the
user euphoria, or in some cases dysphoria -- an unpleasant or
uncomfortable mood, such as depression, anxiety, irritability, or
restlessness.

VOLATILE MIX

When the pills are mixed with booze, it can be a volatile mix, said
Salisbury.

"The mixing of alcohol enhances the effect of a lot of drugs. If you
are mixing those two things together, you can't predict what is going
to happen," he said.

"We have to get the message out that this kind of random
experimentation is dangerous behaviour and potentially deadly."

If oxycontin pills are ground up into powder, the mix becomes even
more powerful because the time-release effect, meaning they get the
entire dose in one shot.

Salisbury said these parties are not a particularly new trend but one
that appears to be on a resurgence.

Ottawa police said they're also hearing from youth at schools that
it's a common party on the weekends.

"You don't know what the hell it is you're getting or what is going to
happen to you," said Staff-Sgt. Pete Gauthier head of the drug unit.

What's worse, Gauthier says parents are unaware their children are
going to these parties.

The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health surveys Ontario teenagers
every two years. The latest edition of its study, released in November
2007, found 21% of Ontario's 1 million students between Grades 7 and
12 had used prescription pain relievers for non-medical purposes in
the year before the survey.

DRUGS FROM HOME

Of those, 72% said they got the drugs from home.

The study was based on a sample of more than 6,000
students.

Among all drugs asked about, twice as many students had used oxycontin
in 2007 -- or about 18,100 -- compared to 2005.

Alcohol remains students' drug of choice with 61% drinking and 26%
consuming more than five drinks on one occasion.

Salisbury said he doesn't want to sound the alarm or fearmonger but
says it's important for people to know there's been a cultural switch
where youth don't think prescription drugs can harm them.

He said people complain to him about relatively minor exposure to
chemicals in the air they breathe but "on the flip side people seem to
have no fear of popping any old pill in their mouth and finding out
what it will do to them."