Prescription drug abuse now tops illegal drug use

Prescription drugs — especially painkillers like OxyContin and amphetamines like Adderall — have topped illegal drugs, including marijuana, as the drug of choice for teens.

And it’s killing them, according to Michael Kress, a staff coordinator for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s Office of Diversion Control. The group works to prevent abuse through drugs that are being diverted from prescribed to “recreational” use.

Kress spoke to a group of about 40 members of the Regional Alliance for Substance Abuse Prevention on Monday at Danville-Pittsylvania Community Services.

A huge problem is lack of knowledge about the dangers of prescription drug abuse on the parts of both the parents and their children, Kress said.

Commonly prescribed drugs — when abused — often have the same effects as illegal ones, he said, citing Ritalin, which can have the same effect as cocaine, and Fentanyl, a painkiller that is at least 80 times more powerful than morphine, and has the same effect as heroin.

One reason prescription drugs — and some over-the-counter medicines, like codeine cough syrups — have become so popular is because they are easy to obtain, Kress said.

The family medicine cabinet, friends, online pharmacies, and what Kress calls “rogue doctors, pharmacies and clinics” can all make the drugs easy to obtain.

And, because of the increased popularity, drug dealers who used to push illegal drugs now are selling illegally obtained prescription drugs, he added.

Kress said a series of $400 visits to different doctors, complaining of nebulous pain, can net someone prescriptions for thousands of pills. Some of those same doctors may even fill the prescriptions, or the user can have them filled at different pharmacies.

More and more states, including Virginia, have oversight procedures in place to prevent “doctor shopping” or “pharmacy shopping,” but users simply visits states that don’t, Kress said.

Users go to great lengths to get the best high possible — and that is often what causes the deadly overdoses. They crush time-release painkillers and inject or snort them to get a full-dose, immediate high. If the medication is in patch form, they might scrape the medicine off, or simply chew on the patch. Some medicines get crushed and smoked, others are injected. Some pills are taken whole, but often in much higher quantities than prescribed, Kress said.

Deadliest of all, many users combine different medications to get a better high, and wind up poisoning themselves instead, he added.

Between 1999 and 2005, unintentional deaths from drug poisoning increased 68.3 percent, and most of those deaths were from prescription drugs, Kress said.

Even when drug abuse doesn’t cause death, the statistics are staggering. In 2006 alone, 700,000 emergency room visits were attributed to prescription drug overdoses.

Parents need to learn more about prescription drug abuse — and then talk to their teens about it, Kress said.

Both the DEA and the National Institute on Drug Abuse have Web sites to help both parents and teens. Parents can visit http://www.DEAdiverson.usdoj.gov or http://www.nida.nih.gov for information, and teens can learn about the effects of prescription drugs at http://www.justthinktwice.com or http://www.teens.drugabuse.gov.

Materials can also be obtained through RASAP, at (434) 799-0456.