'GENERATION RX' LABEL DAZZLES MEDIA

The Partnership for a Drug Free America released its latest survey on teen
drug use last week, prompting the usual almost-verbatim press-release
reporting and expressions of being "shocked, shocked" about "kids today"
from the media.

Almost all of the coverage picked up the Partnership's label "Generation
Rx," so named because nearly one in five of this group of adolescents
reported having used the opioid Vicodin without a prescription. In the
third paragraph of its story, the AP included a quote from the
Partnership's chairman which said, "For the first time, our national study
finds that today's teens are more likely to have abused a prescription
painkiller to get high than they are to have experimented with a variety of
illegal drugs."

But this is only the second time prescription drug use has been included in
the survey -- and it was at the same level when they measured it for the
first time, last year. The AP story (which was picked up by CNN, among many
others) buried this information in its last two paragraphs, along with the
fact that far more kids used marijuana than prescription drugs.

So, it's not only not the first time that prescription drug use has been
this high, it's also not true that kids use more prescription drugs than
marijuana. Where's the news, and where's the truth in the quote? If this is
only the second year that prescription drug use has been measured, the fact
that the level is higher than for cocaine and ecstasy doesn't provide much
information about whether this is a new or ongoing phenomenon.

That's the news here -- but reporters seem to be dazed to see it.