Continued from Page 1

Physical and Emotional Signs

• Changes friends
• Smell of alcohol or marijuana on breath or body
• Unexplainable mood swings and behavior
• Negative, argumentative, paranoid or confused, destructive, anxious
• Over-reacts to criticism acts rebellious
• Sharing few if any of their personal problems
• Doesn't seem as happy as they used to be
• Overly tired or hyperactive
• Drastic weight loss or gain
• Unhappy and depressed
• Cheats, steals
• Always needs money, or has excessive amounts of money
• Sloppiness in appearance

Source: CDC.

Street level drug dealers are not the only problem…by a long shot

Teens are abusing prescription medication — particularly painkillers such as Vicodin and Oxycontin — at alarming rates, experts say.

“The age of experimentation is not college. It’s now high school. We’re going to see the age of drug experimentation get lower and lower and lower,” said Bruce Talbot, a retired Chicago police officer and expert on gateway drugs.

Talbot was in Springfield recently to talk to an Illinois DARE Officers Association conference about drug trends in the state.

Among the things police and medical professionals are seeing: hard-core drug addiction in children, pill parties where teenagers pool medication to get high, increased accessibility to prescription drugs, “smurfing” excursions by downstate youths to Chicago to buy pseudoephedrine for methamphetamine cooks, and record-pure heroin at rock-bottom prices. Some of the trends are reflected in the Springfield area, experts say.

Prescription drug abuse

According to a recent report by the Drug Abuse Warning Network, the number of drug overdose patients admitted to hospitals stayed about the same from 2005 to 2006, but overdoses from prescription drugs went up 21 percent.

“Kids are moving away from illicit drugs that are going to get them busted ... and moving to pharmaceutical drug use,” Talbot said. “They are not being dealt by smarmy-looking dope dealers hanging around the school yard. They are coming from the parents’ medicine cabinets.”

Overdoses of illicit drugs still outnumber prescription drug overdoses, but only by about 4 percentage points, according to the report. The prescription drugs most frequently abused are Vicodin, Oxycontin and methadone. Overdoses often are triggered when teenagers “poly-drug” — combine two or more substances — and come up with a dangerous combination.

Hospital workers also see a lot of overdoses on Xanax, Valium and Soma. Joe Parker, core laboratory manager for St. John’s Hospital, said the trend is reflected here in Springfield. “We are seeing an increase definitely in abuse of prescriptive types of medicines. I think the reason is obvious. It’s easy for the kids to get hold of,” he said.

“A lot are prescriptive pain medications, more than Tylenol or aspirin. These would be things like Oxycontin — the kind of stuff you get from the dentist when you have your wisdom teeth cut out or minor surgical procedures at the hospital. These things are going home and sitting in the medicine cabinet, and Mom and Dad aren’t using them up.” Talbot said the average Vicodin prescription is 30 pills, but people take only about eight of those because they start feeling better.

The rest often stay in the medicine cabinet.

Continued..go to page 3

------------------
Please visit the additional links on this page. These companies have been carefully selected to provide you with a relevant resource to the most important issues facing teens and the parenting of teens.