RX and OTC Awareness Month
RX and OTC Awareness Month
March is prescription and over-the-counter-drug awareness month, and Drug Free America Foundation is weighing in on this very important issue. Nearly one in five teens has used prescription medications to get high, and two in five believe prescription medication is safer than illicit drugs. In Pinellas County , Florida the medical examiner toxicology reports found that prescription drug overdose deaths involving oxycodone rose from 61 in 2001 to 308 in 2008. Cities nationwide are also experiencing similar dramatic increases.
Prescription drugs are becoming more widely abused because of their easy accessibility. 20 percent of teens say they could get prescription drugs within an hour; one third say they could be obtained within a day's time. In an effort to combat this growing problem, we need to take a comprehensive approach. Kids need more education about the consequences of prescription drug abuse. Parents need to be vigilant about medications around the house, dispose of old prescriptions and lock up current medications. Doctors should also be held more accountable about what and how much they are prescribing (state mandated prescription monitoring programs have been successful against this type of abuse).
Awareness and action about prescription drug abuse must be emphasized at home, at school, in the community and in our laws. For more information see the RXOTC Awareness Month website.
Comments
Prescription drug abuse
The escalation of prescription drug abuse - or 'pharming' -in both the USA and the UK is alarming. It is also a telling argument in the so-called debates about drug legalization. Those who want to relax drug laws - not just in the US but worldwide - will often say the currently illicit substances should be 'legalized and controlled' - to be purchased from licensed pharmacies or other outlets - and not, of course, sold to minors.
Hello? Are not prescription drugs controlled and supposedly sold only in
licensed pharmacies ?
The reality is, if we want to hold back the tide of drug abuse and the concomitant
harms to individuals and society the answer is prevention. We need to strive to change the culture of acceptance of drug use, to persuade the media that they have a duty to stop normalising and glamorizing drug use, to awaken parents to demand good drug education in schools, to work with the majority of non-using teens to help them act as peer leaders to dissuade other youth from even trying drugs.
Until governments the world over allocate more resources to primary prevention and insist on prevention of use rather than prevention of harm I fear the drugs problem will continue to increase.
Ann Stoker. National Drug Prevention Alliance. UK