Your kids may be doing drugs – and you could be their supplier.

Prescription drugs are abused by more teens than any drug except marijuana, according to Office of National Drug Control Policy. And, the office says, almost two-thirds of those drugs come from family and friends.

Experts advise locking up your medicine cabinets and throwing away unused medicine, if teens or young adults live with or visit you.

“There is an obvious appeal to obtaining drugs legally; bypassing the street pusher is now a reasonably priced option,” said Cassandra C. Sheets, executive director of the Mohawk Valley Council on Alcoholism/Addictions Inc.

About one-third of drug abuse in this country now involves prescription drugs, she said.

The epidemic has definitely hit the Utica area.
In September, two Whitesboro High School students faced charges of possessing and selling a controlled substance. Earlier that month, two Sauquoit Valley students were sent to the hospital after mixing OxyContin and hydrocodone, according to the Oneida County Sheriff’s Office. Another student faced charges of selling the drugs.

The 2007 Oneida County Teen Assessment Project Report, which surveyed seventh, ninth and 11th graders, found that 7.5 percent of them had taken prescription drugs not prescribed for them, Sheets said.

Prescription drug abuse is increasing locally, said Donna Vitagliano, president and chief executive officer of Insight House.

“Kids feel that, because they’re there, that they’re safe; they’re manufactured by a reputable company. We’re seeing quite a bit of that locally,” she said.

Today’s kids are a lot more sophisticated than those who back in the 1970’s would fill a punch bowl with pills and take a handful, Vitagliano said. Now teens can research drugs on the Internet, and know just what to take to get the effect they want, she said.

However, the notion of “safe drug abuse” is an illusion, say local health-care professionals.
Sandy Harjung, addiction medicine coordinator for Faxton-St. Luke’s Healthcare in Utica, works with addicts who are admitted to the hospital.

She said she regularly sees narcotics addicts going through the symptoms of withdrawl: sweating, nausea, vomiting, muscle aches, possibly fever, anxiety, nervousness and possibly diarrhea, which combined with vomiting, can lead to dehydration.

Withdrawl from narcotics can even prove fatal, said Dr. Tim Page, medical director of the emergency department at Utica’s St. Elizabeth Medical Center.

Page said he’s seen teens come to the emergency room with “altered mental status” from prescription drug abuse and teens who have overdosed on prescription drugs. Patients in his ER have died after overdosing on heart medication, he said.

Those who come into the ER searching for narcotics prescriptions – to sell or to feed their own addiction – are a chronic problem as well, Page said.

Stealing a few painkillers from the medicine cabinet can, over time, lead to a habit of dozens a pills a day as it takes more and more painkillers to get high.

“You have no idea the large quantities some of these people can take … You just can’t believe they can tolerate that much,” Harjung said.

“How do you afford 40 Percocets a day?” Page asked.
“If you’re resourceful and you don’t have the money, well, then you use what you have.”

Often that means stealing and prostitution, he added.
Another danger of taking large quantities of drugs such as Percocet, which combine a narcotic and acetaminophen, is liver damage, especially if an addict also drinks, Page said.

Harjung said she’s seen a definite increase in narcotics addiction since she started her job 12 years ago. And when she’s working with heroin patients, she often finds that they started on prescription drugs, but switched to heroin when narcotics no longer got them high, Harjung said.

And eventually, some end up on IV drugs, setting themselves up for HIV, hepatitis or cellulitis (a bacterial skin infection that can be serious), she said.

The key to prevention, experts agreed, starts at home.

“I think the bottom line is – lock everything up,” Page said. “If you’re a parent, lock your medications. If you’re a grandparent, lock your medications in a safe place that nobody can get into. Throw away your old medications. Look for abnormal behavior in your teenagers."