Partnership for a Drug-Free America Latest Study

From all over the United States, it is being reported that prescription drugs and teens are mixing more and more. A news station in South Bend, Indiana reported on March 9, 2010, fourteen percent of the seniors in St. Joseph county had admitted to using prescription drugs prescribed for someone else. Police sargeant Bill Redman said teens think prescribed drugs are automatically safe.

In Oregon's Mid-Williamette Valley, teens are pilfering the prescriptions (from the medicine cabinets belonging to their parents and grandparents) to get high. It is counted as one of the most important reasons to find a way to deal with left-over drugs.

Partnership for a Drug-Free American released their latest study to let us all know that 63 percent of America's teenagers in grades nine through twelve believe prescription drugs are easy to find and is as close as their parents' medicine cabinet. This percent is up from 56 percent last year.

Since the year 2000, this same study has shown in the same age group, 20 percent of the kids have abused prescription medication at least once. This trend is mostly occurring in the middle class segment because these relatively comfortable young people feel they can find relief from stress or score a cheap high without the risk of going to a drug dealer.

Pharm parties, the new generations answer to the "hairy buffalo" of the past has yet to be blamed for enough deaths to cause statistics to be available, but the Center for Disease Control is acknowledging in a recent report that deaths blamed on opiate-based prescription painkillers like Oxycontin have increased up to three times as many in the years from 1999-2006.