RX ABUSE

A New Study Shows Teens Are Abusing Prescription Drugs In Record Numbers

Drug abuse among teenagers is nothing new. Since the dawn of
adolescent angst, teens have gained impressive repute for testing
their invincibility with mind-altering substances.

Now they're just craftier about it. Whether it's sniffing paint fumes
out of a paper bag or throwing back excessive doses of cough syrup,
today's teens are especially industrious in getting high.

That's why a new study on prescription drug abuse by the National
Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse may not be shocking, but it is
frightening. And it should jolt parents everywhere out of their
collective blindness to the problem.

According to a Washington Post report on the study, prescription drug
abuse is an epidemic among Americans of all ages, especially at a time
when a wider assortment of ever more powerful narcotics are being
prescribed for a variety of ailments.

But the problem is especially alarming among teens, the fastest
growing segment of users.

Of course, kids aren't getting their new drugs from their doctors, but
from their parents' medicine cabinets, from their friends and from the
Internet.

It's a staggering reality that demands a serious response.
Unfortunately, police, parents, pharmacists and doctors aren't paying
adequate attention.

The time has long passed when it was enough to lock the liquor cabinet
and hope for the best. Today's sophisticated times require a more
sophisticated adult response to teen drug abuse -- through better
laws, stronger controls from the medical and drug industries and firm
parental vigilance.

Lock the medicine cabinet and guard the computer, but don't stop
there.

BOTTOM LINE: Parents, lawmakers and the medical community must wake up
and crack down on this troubling epidemic.