"A new category of substance abuse is emerging in America. For the first time, our national study finds that today's teens are more likely to have abused a prescription painkiller to get high than they are to have experimented with a variety of illicit drugs, including Ecstasy, cocaine, crack and LSD.

Given the alarming results of the study, additional research was commissioned to better understand teens' awareness and attitudes towards substance abuse. The findings were almost as shocking. Nearly half of all teens believe using prescription drugs to get high is significantly safer than using street drugs, and close to one-third think painkillers are not addictive. Teens also cited ease of access to the drugs as a dominant factor in their popularity.

Tom Hedrick, director and founding member of the Partnership, said a great danger lies in the fact that teens aren't just abusing one prescription drug, but many (a term called "poly-drug abuse"), and some will pair a drug with alcohol. "When abused or taken in higher doses than recommended, [these drugs] can be dangerous to the point of being lethal," he said. Although there are no hard statistics yet, Hedrick says most teens pop at least double the recommended dosage. As for cold medicine, some kids down two or three bottles in a sitting to achieve an opiate-like high.

"Kids today are much more sophisticated than most adults are," warned Hedrick. "We're so behind the curve here." Instead of relying on word of mouth to get details about new ways to get high, teens are now relying on instant messaging, chat rooms and the Internet for their information. "One teen can stumble across something, and within 36 hours, over 100,000 kids can know about it. Teens have this enormous urge to reach out and tell as many people as they can about what they find, and that can happen overnight, which is not the way we've seen the spread of drugs [in the past]," he said. "It's a new era."

-From MTV.com

Get help for your teen from our Resources of Hope - Teen Hotline is well recommended

The problem isn't just that kids can easily become addicted to painkillers like Oxycontin or Vicodin, antianxiety medicines like Valium or Xanax, or attention-deficit-disorder drugs like Ritalin and Adderall. Taken without proper supervision, those medicines can send kids to the emergency room. They can lead to difficulty breathing, a drop or rapid increase in heart rate or trouble responding when driving a car, especially when the drugs are combined with alcohol, as they often are. Pain medications, which are also powerful nervous-system depressants, are particularly dangerous--and especially prized. "If I have something good, like Oxycontin, it might be worth two or three Xanax," says a 17-year-old pharming veteran who was one of more than a dozen guests (and one of the few girls) at the New Jersey party. "We rejoice when someone has a medical thing, like, gets their wisdom teeth out or has back pain, because we know we'll get pills. Last year I had gum surgery, and I thought, Well, at least I'll get painkillers."

Unfortunately, prescription drugs are often far easier to obtain than illegal ones. Some teenagers come by their pills legitimately but trade them for others, like painkillers, that hold more appeal because of their more potent high. Others order from shady Internet pharmacies where prescriptions aren't always required. Still others take advantage of the fact that neither doctors nor parents tend to think of prescription medications as drugs of abuse. That makes it a fairly easy proposition to fake or exaggerate symptoms in order to persuade physicians to write prescriptions, or to pillage medicine cabinets for pills left forgotten on shelves. "When adults and medical professionals treat medications casually," says Dr. Francis Hayden, director of the adolescent mental-health center at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, "we need not be surprised that adolescents are treating them casually."

Worse yet, many of these kids are abusing illegal drugs at the same time. According to the CASA report, about 75% of prescription-drug abusers are so-called polysubstance users who also take other drugs or drink--most of the New Jersey kids, for instance, were downing their pills with Miller Lite. "My friend told me to save the painkillers for when I'm drinking or getting high," says the 17-year-old with a chuckle as she smokes her last cigarette and flings the empty pack into the backyard. She doesn't think of herself as an addict. But she recognizes the signs of addiction among her friends. "I know a lot of people who live by pills," she says. "They take a pill to wake them up, another pill to put them to sleep, one to make them hungry and another to stop the hunger. Pills can dictate your life--I've seen it."

-From TIME Magazine

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The number of Americans who admit abusing prescription drugs nearly doubled to over 15 million from 1992 to 2003, with abuse among teens tripling, according to a new study. The report by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University was based on surveys of doctors and pharmacists, personal interviews and focus groups and analysis of national household surveys and census data.

The report suggested that more Americans were abusing controlled prescription drugs than cocaine, hallucinogens, inhalants and heroin combined.

The substances most likely to be abused were opioids, or pain relievers like OxyContin or Vicodin; central nervous system depressants such as Valium or Xanax; stimulants including Ritalin or Adderall and anabolic-androgenic steroids like Anadrol or Equipoise.

"The problem can be seen in every stage of life: rich and poor, old and young, teens partying or cramming for exams, stressed executives, women juggling the challenges of work and care-giving, seniors struggling with illness and loss, the mentally ill searching for relief, movie stars, rock musicians and athletes," the report said.

It found that between 1992 and 2002, prescriptions written for controlled drugs increased more than 150 percent while the number of people abusing them rose seven times faster than the U.S. population.

In 2003, 2.3 million 12- to 17-year-olds -- almost one in 10 -- abused least one controlled prescription drug. Girls were more likely than boys to be abusers.

Teens who abused drugs were twice as likely to use alcohol, five times as likely to use marijuana, 12 times likelier to use heroin and 21 times likelier to use cocaine than teens who did not abuse such drugs.

The report also found that in 2002, controlled drugs were implicated in almost 30 percent of drug-related emergency room deaths while the number of prescription drug emergency room mentions in hospital logs increased by nearly 80 percent.

- From Reuters

The report was published in the August issue of Pediatrics. It's the largest study yet to explore the use of hormones and supplements, body image and media influence on adolescents ages 12 to 18.

Out of more than 10,000 young people surveyed, 8 percent of girls and 12 percent of boys said they used supplements in the past year to improve their appearance,

Boys wanting to bulk up were three times as likely to use supplements at least weekly. Boys who read men's, fashion or health magazines were more than twice as likely to use supplements at least weekly, and 29 percent of those had used at least one product in the last year.

"More and more media images show people with sculpted physiques. It used to be just scantily clad women, but now you see more images of men with physiques that are impossible for most people to attain," said Dr. Alison Field, a Harvard Medical School professor of pediatrics and lead researcher on the study. "Girls' concerns about their bodies are well known, but I don't think it's on a parent's radar screen that their sons might have body [image] concerns."

Nearly 30 percent of both sexes said they thought frequently about wanting more toned or defined muscles, and the most commonly used products were protein powders and shakes. Weight lifting and playing football were linked to increased use of supplements, particularly creatine — a supplement which is believed to help athletes boost their performance — amino acids, growth hormones and anabolic steroids.

Field says the problem is facilitated by easy access to these supplements. "The Internet is full of sites where these substances can be purchased, and many are advertised in popular health and fitness magazines with covers like 'Great Abs In Five Minutes A Day,' " she said.

Protein powders are safe, Field notes, but steroids have serious side effects, and other products may not be as risk-free as many assume. Anabolic steroids have been linked to testicular atrophy and male impotence, liver and kidney damage, an increased risk for heart disease, and uncontrollable aggression, nicknamed " 'roid rage."

"Most of us in adolescent medicine think it's [just] best to stay away from these products altogether," Field said.

-From MTV.com

As a result, EVERY teen, including your “good kid”, is exposed to an overdose of use, abuse, extreme choice, live-in-the-moment, take-a-pill-quick-fix messages. They need your CONTINUOUS
involvement, encouragement, and “good messages” about your expectations and standards, your hopes and dreams for them, your belief in them. And even your “good kids” need their parents' strong backbone of selective, not overly invasive, compassionate guidance. Teens may well argue about when parents as: "Where are you going?, Where will you be?, Will a parent be present?, Do you expect alcohol/drugs to be present?,
Remember your curfew." Help them by maintaining your vigilance so that when tempted they can say “NO, my parents would kill me if they found out!”

Hey, we’re all “good drivers,” aren’t we? So how come you got that speeding ticket? We all need reminders of behavioral expectations, boundaries and a clear reminder of the consequences!

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