CHEWELAH - A 12-year-old brings hydrocodone tablets to a middle-school slumber party. A high-schooler steals methadone pills from her parents' medicine cabinet. A 21-year-old cuts open a 12-hour Fentanyl patch, squeezes the drug onto tinfoil, and smokes the entire contents through a "tooter," the stripped plastic cartridge from a Bic pen. He's still holding it in his hand when police break down the bathroom door. He's dead. If Mark Selle sounds upset, it's because the superintendent of Chewelah's Valley and Orient school districts has seen every one of these things happen in his community. [continues 1109 words]
Drug's Bad Press Shouldn't Harm Treatment For Addiction The recent increase in negative perceptions of methadone as a treatment for opiate addiction and the potential that has for limiting treatment alternatives for the citizens of West Virginia is a cause for concern in the health care community. I am a member of the Board of Directors of CRC Health Group, Inc. -- as well as someone who is proud to have spent a significant amount of my professional life supporting effective drug and alcohol treatment. [continues 663 words]
Broadcast Effort Will Begin With Public Service Advertisements The state of California and an anti-drug group this week are kicking off the state's first broadcast campaign to prevent methamphetamine use and to encourage users to seek treatment, officials said. People seek treatment for meth use more than for any other drug problem in the state, a health official said. The campaign will open with public service advertisements on television and radio in the state's five biggest media markets and then expand to other markets. [continues 416 words]
As young people look for a buzz, police say thefts go unreported It's known as "robo-tripping" and can spell serious trouble for those who partake. The practice of abusing over-the-counter cold medications like Robitussin is on the increase among young people, who will sometimes take extraordinary steps to get a buzz, police said. One incident just before Christmas involves a man who police say walked into the Eckerd store at 501 Olde Waterford Way in Leland. The man took three bottles of different types of cough medicine into a restroom and drank all of them, the manager told police. [continues 592 words]
James Muwakkil respects the criticism. But he's not retracting his statement. Speaking about the death of Christopher Hernandez and what Muwakkil views as excessive use of Tasers by Collier County Sheriff's Office deputies, the leader of the Fort Myers Coalition for Justice shocked some with his outspoken candor. A State Attorney's Office probe concluded that Hernandez died from a combination of cocaine, marijuana and Ecstasy, not the electric waves from the Taser during the police stop. Once again, Muwakkil stands by his statement: "They violated his human rights. He has a right to live. Most young people use recreational drugs. That's just a fact of life. We cannot give somebody a death sentence just because they use recreational drugs." [continues 457 words]
To the Editor: Among all the statistics that Mike Males cites in "This Is Your Brain on Drugs, Dad" (Op-Ed, Jan. 3), a crucial point is absent. Teenagers of the 1960s and 1970s did not have the benefit of the aggressive drug prevention and education efforts of the last two decades that have helped to drive down drug use. Research on drug trends is vital to uncover the attitudes that underlie drug using behaviors. It informs prevention efforts and the important work being done in the area of drug treatment and intervention. [continues 116 words]
Fewer Teens Abuse Illegal Drugs; They Just Chug Cold Remedies Now At first blush, it appears to be encouraging news: Teenagers are not getting high on marijuana, alcohol, cocaine and other hard drugs as frequently as they used to. In fact, illegal drug use among teens has nose-dived 23 percent in the past five years alone. But don't get too comfortable, because that doesn't mean they've given up partying. Nothing involving teenagers is ever that easy. It's just that, instead of hitting the liquor cabinet and the street corner drug dealer, Johnny and Jane are increasingly turning to the medicine cabinet and the drugstore shelves. [continues 237 words]
As the article by Christopher Lee outlined, we need to do more to protect our kids from cough-medicine abuse ["Teens Turn to Medicine Cabinets to Get High," Friday]. The Monitoring the Future survey Lee referenced found that that 4.2 percent of eighth-graders, 5.3 percent of 10th-graders and 6.9 percent of 12th-graders have abused cough medicine in some form over the past year. It's time to teach kids - and their parents, who may be unaware of their teen's activities - about the dangers of abusing these otherwise safe medicines. [continues 264 words]
More teenagers are using prescription medications and even over-the-counter drugs, like cough syrup, to get high, according to a new study. The Rio Grande Valley is no exception. A survey released last week from the National Institute on Drug Abuse found that the number of young teens abusing the prescription drug OxyContin has nearly doubled in the last four years, and slightly more teens are using the painkiller Vicodin. In addition, about 7 percent of 12th-graders reported abusing cough or cold medicines. That's about one in every 14, according to the survey. [continues 540 words]
A New Study Finds That Fewer Than 1 in 3 American Teens Now Use Marijuana, but Abuse of Pharmaceuticals Is Rising NEW YORK -- There's some very good news in the battle against illicit drugs: Use by America's teens has dropped more than 23 percent during the last five years. But their abuse of medicines, both over-the-counter and prescription, is rising. These opposing trends - detailed in a survey of teens released Thursday - reflect the complexity of the US drug scene. They also present a new set of challenges. The most important: How to apply the prevention tools that have apparently succeeded in combating illegal drug use to fight the abuse of legal medicines. [continues 759 words]
Kids call it robo-tripping or skittling -- downing high doses of cough syrup or pills to get high off dextromethorphan, a cough suppressant commonly found in over-the-counter medicines. A new study concludes that robo-tripping is sharply on the rise among teenagers -- a finding worrisome to any parent who's wondered about that bottle (or two or three) of Robitussin or Coricidin in their kid's medicine cabinet. Calls to the California Poison Control System's 24-hour hotline involving teen abuse of the ingredient ballooned by 15 times over six years, from 23 in 1999 to 375 in 2004. Although they represent a tiny fraction of all calls made to the hotline -- fewer than two in 1,000 - -- the uptick worries Ilene B. Anderson, a senior toxicologist for the system and senior author of the study. [continues 637 words]
BRONSON - Dawn Bartkus and her family have already decided what to have engraved on her 17-year-old son's headstone. A pair of horseshoes will be etched alongside the name of John Wilson Reynolds Jr. to commemorate his success as a two-time junior champion horseshoe pitcher before his death in October. The message that Bartkus would like to etch everywhere else teens congregate is a warning about something she calls a silent killer: inhalants. Although a final autopsy report is not yet available, family members and investigators said they expect the report to show that John died Oct. 12 as a result of inhaling directly from a can of compressed air, which also contains a propellant that can produce a brief high. [continues 715 words]
I am, at the least, a fourth-generation alcoholic. So is my wife, Deirdre. Our 22-year-old-daughter, Carrick, is a recovering heroin addict. Most members of our family have been successful professionally -- Deirdre's father was an attorney and judge; my side brims with journalists who kept the proverbial pint flask in their desk drawers. My great-grandfather was run over by a trolley car while covering a story in 1904 -- still reporting, probably inebriated, but certainly a broken man who was estranged from his family. Many of his progeny shared his taste not only for booze but also for the illusory camaraderie that goes with it in bars and binges. [continues 2965 words]
The U.S. Department of Justice has declared Thursday, Nov. 30, National Meth Awareness Day, an opportunity to collectively address a threat of increasing concern to Northern Virginia communities: abuse of the highly addictive drug methamphetamine. Surveying the devastation meth has brought to regions of the West and Midwest, Northern Virginia is comparatively fortunate. The area has yet to feel the full force of meth, a drug that breeds crime and violence, saps law enforcement and health care resources, and is associated with heartbreaking child abuse and neglect. [continues 543 words]
GRANVILLE -- The pictures drew collective groans from 180 or so people. They were images of those addicted to crystal meth, their faces covered with sores and their teeth rotting in their mouths. The photos were the most jarring part of a training session Monday at Granville High School designed to educate school staff on the methamphetamine epidemic that has raged in other parts of the country, and may be headed here. Granville school Superintendent Daniel Teplesky said he decided to have the school host the event as part of the district's superintendent's training day after hearing of the event's availability through BOCES. [continues 421 words]
Students at Truman High School were shocked into attentiveness Monday during a methamphetamine presentation from the Partnership for a Drug Free America. The Meth 360 presentation featured images of open sores and rotting teeth, illustrating the physical effects of meth abuse. "Oh that's disgusting," and "ewww yuck" echoed through the crowd of Truman students. Rich Palladino from the Partnership for a Drug Free America showed before and after pictures of meth users and explained the long-term effects of meth abuse. [continues 1203 words]
A small group of adults huddled away in the corner of a library talked about marijuana, ecstasy, alcohol and an assortment of other drugs. But they weren't planning on causing any trouble. In fact, they were hoping to prevent trouble from happening to any of their children. "I was really looking for current information," said Randee Farquhar of Shady Shores, noting that a lot has changed in terms of drug awareness since her high school days. Farquhar was one of about a dozen parents who met Friday night in the Crown-over Middle School library for Drug Awareness Parent's Night, in honor of Drug Awareness month and the upcoming Red Ribbon Week. [continues 808 words]
Popular Bunny's Negative Attitude May Reach a Wider Audience, They Say It's cute and always happy, but it's this bunny's big attitude and messages like, "You're ugly and that's sad" that have won over scores of teens, "tweens" and even adults around the globe. "It's Happy Bunny" -- the pop icon whose smiling face and snarky messages appear on everything from T-shirts to key chains, lunch boxes and even toilet paper -- will now channel its scorn to vices that tempt youth: drugs, alcohol and cigarettes. [continues 760 words]
Speakers, Task Force Members Share Mixed Opinions on Possible Legislation OKLAHOMA CITY - Lahoma Horse would like to see Oklahoma legislators use some muscle to move cough syrup away from a minor's grasp. "In Oklahoma, our safeguard should be legislation," said Horse, prevention specialist at the Wichita Mountains Prevention Network in Lawton, Okla. "As it is now, kids can go into a store and purchase large amounts of cough syrup." Purchases, she said, that can be dangerous. Horse works a lot with the American Indian population in Oklahoma and sees a problem of kids taking excess amounts of cough syrup to get high. [continues 783 words]
The New Case Against Pot? It Makes You Lazy. The spot: A high-school kid sits on a couch in a basement rec room, next to a couple of stoner friends. Looking straight at the camera, he says, "I smoked weed and nobody died. I didn't get into a car accident. I didn't OD on heroin the next day. Nothing happened. We sat on Pete's couch for 11 hours." The couch then magically teleports into the midst of some wholesome teen scenes (kids mountain biking, ice skating, playing basketball), while the zonked-out stoners just sit there, looking bored. Our narrator concedes that you're more likely to die out there in the real world ("driving hard to the rim" or "ice skating with a girl") than on Pete's couch back in the rec room. But, deciding it's worth the trade-off, he says, "I'll take my chances out there." [continues 728 words]
