Prescription Drug Abuse Often Starts Early

Prescription drug abuse often begins in the teenage years, according to and law enforcement local educators.

Captain Chad Brooks, Narcotics Officer with the Pickens County Sheriff's Office, School District of Pickens County Superintendent Dr. Kelly Pew and Pickens High School Principal Marion Lawson recently served on a panel convened to discuss prescription drug abuse in Pickens County.

The panel was part of the “Red Zone Rally” sponsored by the Prescription Drug Abuse Alliance to raise awareness of this issue in the community.

“One of the common sources for this is the family medicine cabinet at home,” Brooks said. “It's easy access for them. People don't think about locking this stuff up for their kids and unfortunately, that's how the abuse cycle starts, they get what's easily accessible to them. They haven't made it to the black market yet to get the illegal drugs and these are handy.”

Teens buy into some of the myths about prescription drug use and abuse, Brooks said.

“It's a popular misconception, especially among teenagers, that since it's a pill prescribed by a physician, it's okay, it won't hurt,” he said. “That's how most people get into that downward spiral.”

Dr. Jim Mahanes, who heads up the Prescription Drug Abuse Alliance and moderated the panel, asked how the problem was impacting the school district.

Dr. Pew spoke of her time as a principal.

“We would get students who would bring drugs and typically it was from the medicine cabinet,” Pew said. “They would bring them to school and sell them for a pretty cheap price and get other students addicted to those.”

Lawson said there have been several cases at Pickens High School and the other three high schools in the district.

“That involved hydrocodone, niacin, tramadol, everything from Aleve to migraine headache medicines,” he said. “We've had several cases where we've just identified them in our system as 'unknown pill.' We couldn't make positive identification.”

School administrators are seeing just as much, or maybe even more, use and abuse of prescription drugs than street drugs by students, Lawson said.

“Most of the street drugs that we've dealt with here have been marijuana situations,” he said. “It's not been the more hard street drugs you might seen in some areas. But what we are seeing more of is the student that comes in, they've taken something that another student gave them, they've shared a pill.

“Frankly, when it comes to our attention is when there's a problem in the classroom – a student has fainted, we've had a couple of students who've had seizures,” Lawson continued. “When we've regained control through our school nurse and other EMS folks, we've found that they've indeed taken something that was prescribed for someone else. Most of the time we've traced it back, with the help of Mr. Brooks and his team, to folks who having access to these things in their home or they're stealing them.”

Lawson said when he speaks to parents and grandparents after such situations, they're often unaware that prescription medications have been disappearing from the home.

“Our goal at the school standpoint, or the district standpoint is to ratchet up that level of awareness, that we need to be careful, whether it's counting them or however else we keep up with those things, that they're aware of the nature of the problem,” Lawson said.