Feb 14, 2007 11:50 pm US/EasternTeen Abuse Of Prescription Drugs Holding SteadyReport Finds Marijuana Use DecliningNEW YORK (CBS/AP) — Junior's been helping himself to Mother's little helper.
That's the conclusion of a report released Wednesday by White House drug czar John Walters that found while teenagers' use of marijuana is declining, their abuse of prescription drugs is holding steady or in some cases increasing.
"The drug dealer is us," said Walters, the national drug policy director, who released the report Wednesday at a news conference in New York. "We have to have a response that keeps that very important fact in mind."
Teens who are being treated for prescription drug addiction agreed.
"It's available and you can get high off of it," said Michael Robin, a 17-year-old who is being treated for addiction to drugs including Xanax and OxyContin at a Phoenix House facility on Long Island.
Walters said in some cases teens use the Internet to obtain drugs or to visit Web sites that provide what purport to be instructions for taking safe amounts of various prescription drugs.
Victoria Winebarger, a therapist at the Pathway Family Center in Southfield, Mich., said some of her clients have also used the Internet to research symptoms of conditions including depression and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder so that they can get a doctor to prescribe drugs for them. "That's not uncommon," she said.
According to an analysis of national drug surveys prepared by Walters' office, 2.1 million teenagers abused prescription drugs in 2005, the last year for which figures are available.
While their use of marijuana declined from 30.1 percent to 25.8 percent from 2002 to 2005, use of OxyContin, a painkiller, increased from 2.7 percent to 3.5 percent over the same period. Use of Vicodin, another pain reliever, increased slightly from 6 percent to 6.3 percent.
Teens are abusing pain relievers as well as stimulants like Adderall and anti-anxiety drugs like Xanax because they are readily available and perceived as safer than street drugs, Walters said.
"Fifty-seven percent of them say they get them free from friends or they take them out of somebody's medicine cabinet," Walters said in a telephone interview Tuesday.
The report is based on the 2005 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, a survey of 68,308 families, and the 2005 Monitoring the Future Survey of 50,000 eighth, 10th and 12th graders conducted by the University of Michigan.
According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, marijuana use is still more common than prescription drug abuse among youths 12 to 17 years old.
Three percent, or 840,000, of 12-to-17-year-olds said they had abused prescription drugs in the past month, compared with 7 percent who had used marijuana.
The Monitoring the Future Survey found that the list of drugs abused by 12th graders was headed by marijuana, with 31.5 percent reporting they had used it in the past year. The rest of the top five were prescription drugs -- Vicodin, amphetamines, cough medicine, and sedatives and tranquilizers.
Teenagers and drug counselors said the popularity of prescription drugs is fed by the belief that they are less risky than street drugs.
"It seemed a lot safer because I knew what they were putting in them," said Sara Johnson, a 16-year-old who is being treated for drug addiction at the Pathway Family Center in Southfield, Mich.
Johnson, who planned to attend Wednesday's news conference in New York, said she abused drugs including Xanax and Adderall before bottoming out and going into treatment.
"I would ask people, 'Oh, do your parents have any painkillers at the house?"' she said. "'Or do they use Adderall?' It was really easy after a while."
Dr. Terry Horton, the medical director of Phoenix House, which operates nearly 100 substance abuse programs in nine states, said the belief that prescription drugs are safer than street drugs is false.
"These medicines cause dependence and addiction when misused and have the potential to cause death," he said. "We're talking about medicines that are related, pharmacologically, to heroin and have very similar effects."
Walters said adults should keep track of prescription drugs and throw them out when they expire.
"People just aren't aware that they need to be careful, and so they leave prescriptions in the medicine cabinet and they don't think anything about it," he said. "Once you tell them there is a hazard here, there are easy steps to take to put these things in a safe place, to monitor them and also to toss them once you've used them."
(© 2007 CBS Broadcasting Inc.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
