Whether you or a parent of a teen or not, the current epidemic of prescription drug abuse by our nation’s adolescents should alarm you.
Prescription drugs like OxyContin, Vicodin, Ritalin and Valium are the killer new teen high. As reported in www.philly.com.
According to a recent study, one out of every six American teenagers say he or she has taken a prescription drug at least once in the past year. One in 11 is drug-dependent and one in five show signs of dependence.
Those are terrifying statistics. To think that 10% of our nation’s future is already addicted to drugs and they are not even 20!
While kids swipe pills from medicine cabinets and purses, trade them at school or pluck them from bowls at “pharma parties,” parents are often clueless. We don’t think it can happen to our kids, so we say little, miss early warning signs and fumble opportunities to educate and protect our kids.
We need to finally mandate drug classes for all of our nation’s children. We should not wait until they have a drug-related incident in order to make them take a drug education class.
This will be the first in a series of blogs looking at our youth’s problems with prescription medication and we will examine ways to combat this problem.