Young people call it pharming: experimenting with pills prescribed for others.

[Guest guest]

SSRI-Research@

Wed, 30 Mar 2005 23:53:14 -0000

[sSRI-Research] Young people call it " pharming " :

experimenting with pills prescribed for others.

 

 

 

 

Wednesday, March 30, 2005, 11:37 A.M. Pacific

 

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/health/2002223822_healthteendrug

s30.html?syndication==rss

 

 

Kids getting high — and hooked — on prescription drugs

 

By Daniel Costello

Los Angeles Times

 

 

Ryan Smith remembers the night, during his junior year of high

school, when a friend gave him his first Vicodin. " It felt so

incredible. I remember thinking, 'I am going to do this for the rest

of my life,' " he says.

 

Over the next year, Smith, now 22, and his friends moved on to other

pills — Xanax, Valium, OxyContin and the attention-deficit disorder

medication Adderall, called " kiddie cocaine " for its ability to be

crushed and snorted. " At the time, it felt like I knew more kids who

were doing pills than who weren't, " he says of his Utah high-school

days.

 

Daniel Smith, his younger brother, began using prescription drugs the

same way when a friend offered him Vicodin while watching a school

football game during his sophomore year. By that summer, he began

taking " weak painkillers " such as Lortab and Percocet. Finally, he

turned to highly addictive OxyContin, using it several times a week.

 

Although the brothers eventually went through an addiction program,

they never considered themselves " druggies. " They were using pills

safe enough to be used by millions of Americans, drugs both legal and

easy to get.

 

Each generation typically finds a new illicit drug to make its own:

LSD in the '70s, cocaine in the '80s and Ecstasy and heroin in

the '90s. Today's middle- and high-school students are experimenting

with prescription drugs.

 

Last week, two students at Snohomish Freshman Campus in the city of

Snohomish were rushed, unconscious, to a hospital after one had taken

OxyContin and the other an antidepressant. The two are now recovering

at home, and the students who supplied them with the prescription

drugs were arrested Saturday.

 

Last month 16 students at Bothell's Skyview Junior High were

suspended for distributing or taking drugs, including Vicodin and

Adderall. Northshore School District spokeswoman Susan Stoltzfus said

some of the students took the drugs without knowing what they were.

 

 

Adults use them, too

 

The drugs of choice are those often preferred by adults. After

amphetamines such as Ritalin, they're turning to painkillers such as

Vicodin and Percocet, then sedatives and tranquilizers.

 

Nationwide, prescription pills have become a societal force. Adults

and children rely on them for a growing list of afflictions,

including anxiety, depression, even shyness, for which few

alternatives were available a generation ago. Nearly half of all

Americans take at least one prescription drug.

 

Meanwhile, direct-to-consumer drug marketing that touts new and

expanded uses has become widespread. Adults and children alike are

exposed to print, television and radio ads promising happier, more

fulfilled lives. For young people, experts say, all these factors

appear to have blurred the line between the benefits and dangers of

the medications.

 

As prescription drug sales have soared — up nearly 400 percent since

1990 — prescription medication has become the fastest-growing

category of drugs being abused, with the biggest growth of abuse

among people ages 12 to 24, according to the federal Substance Abuse

and Mental Health Services Administration. After marijuana,

prescription drugs are the drugs most commonly abused by teenagers,

the federal agency says.

 

Nationally, an estimated 14 percent of high-school seniors have used

prescription drugs for nonmedical reasons at least once in their

lifetime, according to a 2004 University of Michigan survey that

tracks drug trends among middle- and high-school students.

 

 

Party prescriptions

 

" It's a major concern to us that young people have the impression

they can use medicine as a party drug, " says Dr. H. Westley Clark,

director of the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment at the

Department of Health and Human Services.

 

The rise in prescription abuse — or " pharming " as young people and

drug counselors sometimes call it — worries treatment counselors and

drug-research experts. A national push to reduce drugs such as

marijuana, cocaine and heroin has started to pay off, with overall

drug use among young adults declining slightly in recent years. But

abuse of prescription drugs — especially among younger people often

dubbed the " Ritalin generation " — has been growing and could grow

further as drug sales continue to increase.

 

" Pills are more seductive to kids because they see them as cleaner,

safer and less illegal, " says Carol Falkowski, a drug researcher at

Hazelden, a nationally known treatment center in Center City, Minn.

 

Many younger users don't know what many of the drugs are for or which

pills are more addictive than others, Falkowski says. Nor do they

have much sense of what dosages are truly dangerous or how separate

drugs interact. Are four Percocets worse than two Vicodin? Can Valium

be mixed with Xanax? Treatment counselors say some young users take a

fistful of different drugs at once.

 

After the two Snohomish students were hospitalized, school district

spokeswoman Shannon Parthemer said parents need to talk to their

children about the dangers of prescription drugs in the same way they

would warn them about illegal drug use.

 

" Both these drugs (OxyContin and an antidepressant) could be found in

the home. Parents need to be proactive about the risks, " she said.

 

Data from the federal Drug Abuse Warning Network show that visits to

hospital emergency departments for overdoses of prescription drugs

have increased in Seattle and nationwide.

 

Between 1995 and 2002, pain relievers — OxyContin or Lortab, for

example — involved in Seattle emergency-room visits increased 85

percent.

 

Data also show that many were using more than one drug.

 

" We see a lot of kids doing pills in combination with something else,

like alcohol or marijuana, " says Tim Burdick, director of chemical

dependency services at Seattle's Ryther Child Center, which offers an

inpatient drug-treatment program for adolescents. Of the 20 kids in

the program, six have a history of prescription-drug abuse, he says.

 

 

Strategizing symptoms

 

Sometimes it's as easy as sneaking some expired, forgotten

painkillers out of dad's cupboard. But increasingly, Burdick says,

teens are savvy enough to know how to feign or exaggerate symptoms to

elicit the desired prescriptions — such as Ritalin — from their

doctors

 

" Sometimes it's not even about the impact of the drug itself —

they're not getting what you'd call a high by popping

antidepressants — but getting the drug is the exciting part, " he

says.

 

Students say prescription pills can often be less expensive than

other drugs such as marijuana and cocaine. Pain pills such as Vicodin

sell for around $5, depending on the dose, while stronger medications

such as OxyContin can cost several times that. Ritalin, one of the

most widely available drugs, sells for $1 to $2 a pill, students say,

but can be more expensive before midterms and finals, when students

use them to cram.

 

Under federal law, it's illegal to possess controlled substances

without a prescription. But prosecutions for possession are rare,

especially when minors are involved. Many schools bar students from

carrying medications without a prescription, but enforcement can be

difficult.

 

Response from state and federal governments and pharmaceutical

companies, meanwhile, has been limited. Last year, the Bush

administration introduced an effort to control prescription drug

abuse, but most of the plan centers on reducing sales of narcotic

medications online or by doctors who write pain prescriptions too

freely.

 

The Food and Drug Administration and the Substance Abuse and Mental

Health Services Administration have instituted a new print and

television ad campaign, " The Buzz Can Take Your Breath Away, "

highlighting the dangers of prescription drug abuse among young

people. And Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, has introduced a

public campaign about the dangers of abusing the drug after reports

of misuse.

 

Ryan and Daniel Smith both recently completed a rehabilitation

program for prescription drug abuse. Now attending college in

Arizona, they say they're trying to keep each other from relapsing.

 

Both have been sober for nearly a year, and they've each started part-

time jobs. The two say they occasionally attend Narcotics Anonymous

meetings but don't like going because some of the people who attend

depress them.

 

" We weren't really druggies, " says Daniel. " We just fell into

something. The pills were all over the place. "

 

Seattle Times staff reporters Julia Sommerfeld, Lynn Thompson and

Ashley Bach contributed to this report