At CVS pharmacies, you now have to be at least 18 to buy Coricidin Cough & Cold medicine. At Walgreens, there's a three-pack limit on an extra-strength variety of those pills. And at some independently owned drugstores, syrup bottles and blister packs of cough suppressants have vanished from shelves and reappeared behind the counter, near the cigarettes or the prescription drugs.
The nation's pharmacy giants are taking precautions in response to a trend that doctors and anti-drug abuse activists say could grow into an epidemic: teenagers and young adults using medicine to get high.
"It's clearly a serious problem," said the AMA's Michael D. Maves.
(American Medical Association via AP)
|
|
There are other, darker signs: One morning in May, on a lark, five ninth-graders in Loudoun County swallowed a "cocktail" of Coricidin and the motion-sickness drug Dramamine. Nauseated and loopy, they were rushed to Loudoun Hospital Center, where an emergency room physician explained that the drugs -- considered safe when used as intended -- can be fatal in very large doses.
From acid to ecstasy, patterns of substance abuse have evolved with the times, and in recent years, illicit use of prescription and over-the-counter drugs has soared among a certain demographic -- mostly suburban, mostly young and mostly middle class, according to researchers. They get the drugs through the Internet, at school and from their parents' medicine cabinets.
"We feel this is going to be the next big wave of substance abuse in the country," said Steve Dnistrian, executive vice president of the Partnership for a Drug-Free America. "It's limited to no one prescription drug or over-the-counter drug. It's a new and emerging category we've been watching over the last two years, and we've seen it's going to be a significant problem in the years to come if the data continue to head where they're heading."
The data, to some, are startling. Prescription drugs are now second only to marijuana as a category of illicit substance abused by teenagers, according to the 2003 National Survey on Drug Use and Health. The number of teenagers calling into poison control centers nationwide about cough medicine abuse has doubled in four years.
In a survey of more than 7,000 teenagers by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, one in five reported taking a prescription painkiller without a doctor's prescription.
"Prescription drug use is all over the place," said Chrissy Trotta, a student at George Washington University and the founder of a campus group aimed, in part, at preventing that type of behavior. "Often painkillers, things like Vicodin, are mixed with other drugs. . . . It's a tremendous problem."
The motivation is often boredom and a sense of rebellion -- not unlike what motivated drug users of their parents' generation, according to interviews with more than a dozen Washington area high school students and an equal number of college students from across the country. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of repercussions from their parents and their schools.
Alex Kaplan, 17, a high school senior from Anne Arundel County, said that he has never used prescription or over-the-counter drugs to get high but that abuse of both is prevalent among some of his peers.
