Health News
Prescription Drug Use and Teens
May 16, 2006
For a third straight year, the Partnership for a Drug-Free America study showed that about 1 in 5 teens have tried prescription drug painkillers such as Vicodin or OxyContin to get high -- about 4.5 million teens. It also indicated that many teens feel experimenting with prescription drugs is safer than illegal highs.
Teen smoking and drinking continued to drop, but teenage abuse of prescription drugs has become "an entrenched behavior" that many parents fail to recognize, a survey released Tuesday showed.
Forty percent of teens said prescription medicines were "much safer" than illegal drugs, while 31 percent said there was "nothing wrong" with using prescription drugs "once in a while." The study further found that 29 percent of teens believe prescription pain relievers are non-addictive.