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I turned on the Today Show during a segment about prescription drug abuse by teens when I was folding clothes this morning. I felt sick inside. I have two teens and I know many more as a high school basketball coach.
It was frightening to hear about the abuse that is going on. The life’s lost. There is such easy access to prescription drugs for kids. Some just reach into their parent’s medicine cabinets for pills, while others are GIVEN prescriptions from their parent’s bottles.
In the documentary “Out of Reach,” by 17-year old by Cyrus Stowe, a teen tells of parties where kids bring pills from their parent’s prescription bottles and toss them all into a big bowl. Then the teens reach in and take pills at random.
I told my husband about this and he said, “Why would they do that?”
It just scares me to think about it. Maybe that’s it? The danger. The thrill of the unknown. But perhaps the teens truly don’t understand how much danger is involved. Maybe some think, “Hey it’s prescribed by a doctor, my parents take it, how dangerous can it be?”
Aaron Rubin was a high school football star and drug addict. He used painkillers to get high. Aaron accidentally overdosed at a friend’s house and was left with permanent brain damage. He can’t talk or walk, and his parents have to care for him.
prescription drugs are dangerous!
According to the 2012 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, prescription medications are the most abused drugs among 12 and 13 year olds. A survey reported on drugfreeworld.org reports that in 2005, 4.4 million teenagers (aged 12 to 17) in the US admitted to taking prescription painkillers, and 2.3 million took a prescription stimulant such as Ritalin. In 2007, the Drug Enforcement Administration found that abuse of the painkiller Fentanyl killed more than 1,000 people that year in the US.
Think about it.
Watch the segment. If you have kids, talk to them. If you’re a kid, think about your choices, you are worth it.
Today Show’s SECRET LIFE OF TEENS: The dangerous drug parents aren’t talking about with kids
