Prescription drug abuse is increasing among teenagers and children, who are able to buy them easily online, according to two new studies.
The Partnership for a Drug-Free America's annual report on teenage drug use found that one in five abuses prescription pain medications and one in ten abuses cough medicines. The most commonly abused substances are painkillers, stimulants, sedatives, and tranquilizers. While older teens prefer stimulants, younger ones like painkillers, and girls are more likely than boys to abuse prescription drugs.
While some teens buy their drugs over the Internet, the majority (56 percent) get them free from friends or relatives. Only 9 percent buy from people they know, 19 percent through doctors, and 4 percent from drug dealers, according to the partnership study.
"Teens get them from their parents' medicine cabinets or from kids at school who steal them from their parents and sell them for as much as $40 a pill," said Dr. Jennifer Lee, a psychiatrist and expert on
teen drug use. She advised parents to take teens who are abusing drugs to health professionals in order to find appropriate treatments.
The second study came from the National Center on Addiction and Drug Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University. Researchers spent five years searching the Internet for websites selling and advertising prescription drugs and found a total of 365. Of those, only two were legitimate, and 85 percent did not require prescriptions from doctors, although they were selling powerful narcotics like Oxycontin. Teenagers and even children could access the websites, according to CASA's 28-page report. One problem is that the websites instantly shut down when legal authorities find them.
Labels: abuse, addictions, prescription_drugs
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