What's In Your Medicine Cabinet?

The family medicine cabinet is now being "pharmed" by kids looking for drugs - over the counter, prescription, whatever they can get their hands on.

What happens next is frightening.

According to Pat Connors, substance abuse expert, "They'll combine them all together in a bag or a hat or whatever, pass it around, take a handful, and then sit back to see what happens to them."

And in many cases the results are devastating.

Millions of teenagers are abusing a variety of prescription (Rx) and over-the-counter (OTC) medications to get high.

According to the most recent data from the Partnership for Drug Free America, approximately one in five teenagers has abused a prescription painkiller to get high, and one in 11 has abused OTC products, like cough medicine.

Today's teens are more likely to have abused an Rx painkiller than they are to have experimented with a variety of illicit drugs - including Ecstasy, cocaine, crack and LSD.

Also, drugs called "opioids" are frequently prescribed to relieve pain, but if abused they can kill.

Over the past 15 years, sales of opioid pain killers, including oxycodone, hydrocodone, methadone and fentanyl, have increased, and deaths from these drugs have increased in parallel.

The situation appears to be accelerating, just look at the historical trend here:

The situation appears to be accelerating, just look at the historical trend here:
* Between 1979 and 1990 the rate of deaths attributed to unintentional drug poisoning increased by an average of 5.3% each year.
* Between 1990 and 2002, the rate increased by 18.1% per year. The contribution played by opioids is also increasing.
* Between 1999 and 2002 the number of overdose death certificates that mention poisoning by opioid pain killers went up by 91.2%.
* While the pain killer category showed the greatest increase, death certificates pointing a finger of blame at heroin and cocaine also increased by 12.4% and 22.8% respectively.

What is it that compels kids to want to raid your medicine cabinet?

Is it that they are already hooked?

No.

Could it be that they are curious?

Most likely.

Boredom?

Highly probable!

The point here is that many of these deaths mentioned could have been avoided by providing proper education about drugs.

At Friends of Narconon that is exactly what we do.

We provide drug education to kids right in their own school.

The Narconon drug education program has a proven track record in teaching kids the truth about drugs in a way they can relate to.

Now this program is available in video form and is being sent to schools all across the USA and Canada.

Other countries are being worked on as well.

Some of the stories I have reviewed on deaths of these types of drugs are simply too horrific to place them in this briefing, so I will spare you the gory details!

It is enough to know this -- if we reach our children with the truth about drugs, they stand a much better chance of staying alive and not becoming another statistic.

So join in and help us reach our kids before its too late.

We have a very easy way for you to help us do that -- its simple -- sponsor some schools to receive our "Truth About Drugs" video program!

Contact Donna Miller at Friends of Narconon today! 1-800-882-6862

Sincerely,

Robert Hernandez, CCDC*
President, Friends of Narconon, Intl.
*Certified Chemical Dependency Counselor

P.S. To Sponsor a school. Click here (or copy and paste into your browser):
<http://www.friendsofnarconon.org/drug_education/school_sponsorship_program/>

Make a donation right now. Click here (or copy and paste into your browser):
<http://friendsofnarconon.org/>

PSS: I still need a few more answers to the quiz "What is the cause of Boredom?".

© 2007 Friends of Narconon, Intl. All Rights Reserved. Narconon, the Narconon logo, and the Narconon "Jumping Man" logo are trademarks and service marks owned by Association for Better Living and Education International and are used with its permission.