Teenagers Taking Drugs: It Always Has Been and Always Will Be

Although there has been a so-called "war on drugs" since the 1980s, it hasn't been a completely successful venture, depending on how you examine today's society. While there evidently may be less use of street drugs like crack and heroin, prescription drug abuse is steadily increasing, especially among the average teenager.

Have you ever heard of a "pharm" party? If you haven't, don't fret, you probably will next time you watch your favorite news program's expose on teenage drug use. This type of party is basically when a group of teenagers get together and dump all the leftover prescription drugs found in their household medicine cabinets into a bowl. The party gets underway as the kids take pills at random.

This is extremely dangerous. Not only are these kids taking massive amounts of highly addictive prescription pills such as Xanax, OxyContin, Ambiem, Valium, and Vicodin; they are mixing these drugs at dangerous levels. Sometimes, the kids don't even know what they're swiping from Mom and Dad's medicine cabinet - they think it looks cool and want to have a little adventure.

Parents must face it - kids are going to experiment. They always have and they always will. All parents today were teenagers at some point in their lives and many did their fair share of experimenting in high school and college. But it lies with the parents, the educators, and the media to educate our kids to know what can happen when they steal and mix prescription drugs.

Let's think back at what happened to Heath Ledger in January 2008 who had a prescription to all of the drugs that were found in his system after he died. Ledger's death was a wake up call to many people taking these prescription medications, and how mixing them can affect you - or kill you. Or kill your children.

Not only should parents keep an eye on what's happening in their medicine cabinets, they should dispose of their leftover medications properly. A simple flush down the toilet has been found to have serious environmental repercussions, so we must rely on other ways to throw away old pills. More than 26% of households simply throw unused medications away in the trash. Our kids are smart, they can look in the trash and pick out the pills, so the trash can is not an effective way of getting rid of unused or old medication.

One way to rid your household of medications - either prescription or not - is to mix the medication in with the used cat litter. In most cases, any kid (or junkie for that matter) who is interested in swiping some leftover meds for an upcoming pharm party will think twice, maybe three times, before picking through the kitty poop.

If you don't have a cat, don't worry. You can use sawdust, used coffee grounds, dog poop from Fido's evening walk, or just about any other yucky substance you can pack the pills into before throwing away.

Sources:

"Don't flush leftover meds - mix with kitty litter", MSNBC.MSN.com
MSNBC Live Vote, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21643594/, MSNBC.MSN.com