Prescription Drug

With the escalating rates of prescription and over-the-counter (OTC) medicine abuse affecting communities nationwide, this issue will be one of the featured topics at CADCA's National Leadership Forum next month. Several workshops will address everything from prescription take back programs to media campaigns to raise awareness of over-the-counter cough medicine abuse.

USA Today reported that about one in four soldiers admit abusing prescription drugs, most of them pain relievers, in a one-year period. That's according to a Pentagon health survey released Wednesday. The study, which surveyed more than 28,500 U.S. troops last year, showed that about 20 percent of Marines had also abused prescription drugs, mostly painkillers, in that same period.

While there were slight decreases in the use of cocaine and methamphetamine among youth, teen marijuana use showed no signs of slowing down. In fact, according to the 2009 Monitoring the Future Survey, marijuana use among adolescents has increased gradually over the past two years after years of declining use; and past year rates of Vicodin and OxyContin abuse increased during the last 5 years among 10th graders and remained unchanged among 8th and 12th graders. The MTF Survey, which surveys youth in 8th, 10th and 12th graders, was released Monday by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the University of Michigan.

With more young people abusing prescription drugs than any illicit drug except marijuana, communities across the country are holding prescription take back events as part of their efforts to reduce youth access to these drugs and increase awareness about the dangers of prescription drug abuse.

The National Council on Patient Information and Education (NCPIE), along with the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and representatives from 15 nationally recognized prevention, health professional and child advocacy organizations, are launching Maximizing Your Role as a Teen Influencer: What You Can Do to Help Prevent Teen Prescription Drug Abuse.

October is National Medicine Abuse Awareness Month, which presents a timely opportunity to promote community involvement in efforts to educate parents about the dangers of medicine abuse among teens. There are a number of free resources and tools available for coalitions to use in their medicine abuse prevention efforts.

Calling attention to the ongoing problem of substance abuse and addiction in the United States, Congresswoman Mary Bono Mack recently testified in a subcommittee hearing on the affect of the drug trade on America's youth and on the need to update and improve the U.S. approach to reducing both the supply of and demand for drugs in the Western Hemisphere. Bono Mack, a leading advocate for the prevention and treatment of substance abuse and addiction and an original co-sponsor of the Western Hemisphere Drug Policy Commission Act (H.R. 2134), which was passed by the Western Hemisphere Subcommittee last week, emphasized the importance of a holistic approach to this serious issue that affects families across America, including her own.

Prescription drug abuse was ranked among the top five problems facing community anti-drug coalitions in 2008, indicating that this continues to be a growing trend across the country. That’s according to CADCA’s 2008 Annual Survey of Coalitions, an annual survey of drug prevention community coalitions, which represents the only current, national database of community anti-drug coalitions.

A new report by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) concluded that in more than 16 states, more people were killed by drugs than by auto accidents. The study, which was reported by the Associated Press, found that the majority of drug-related deaths were caused by the abuse of painkillers

A recent White House analysis shows that teens are turning away from street drugs, like marijuana and cocaine, and are now abusing prescription drugs to get high. The report, "Teens and Prescription Drugs: An Analysis of Recent Trends on the Emerging Drug Threat," released in February by the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), found that new users of prescription drugs have now caught up with new users of marijuana, and prescription drugs are now the second most commonly used illegal drug by teens to get high, behind marijuana. The report also shows that the majority of teens, who use these products, are getting them easily and for free.

Forty-nine percent (3.8 million) of full time college students binge drink and/or abuse prescription and illegal drugs, according to Wasting the Best and the Brightest: Substance Abuse at America´s Colleges and Universities,, a new report by The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University.

Emergency room visits related to the nonmedical use of pharmaceuticals, including prescription and over-the-counter drugs, increased 21 percent from 2004 to 2005, according to the latest estimates from the Drug Abuse Warning Network, 2005: National Estimates of Drug-Related Emergency Department Visits. Visits related to illicit drug use or alcohol were unchanged for the same time period.

In response to the growing national problem of prescription drug abuse, the University of California-San Francisco (UCSF) is launching a new study to evaluate treatments for addiction to prescription painkillers. The research is the first large-scale study to assess whether addiction to opioid painkillers, such as Vicodin and OxyContin, can effectively be treated with drug treatments currently used for heroin addiction.