home medicine cabinet...

...the current drug provider for many teens;


The misuse of prescription medications by adolescents is surpassed only by illicit use of alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana. A study to be published in the August 2009 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (JAACAP) shows that how an adolescent obtains these prescription drugs may signal the likelihood that an adolescent will be concurrently abusing another substance and the severity of substance abuse and prescription misuse.

Drs. Ty Schepis and Suchitra Krishnan-Sarin at the Yale University School of Medicine used data from the 2005 and 2006 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), to show that across all classes of medications (opioids, stimulants, tranquilizers, and sedatives) nearly 50 percent were obtained from friends or families for free. With the exception of opioids, the second most common source was by purchasing the drug from friends or relatives (13.1% - 29.7%) or from a drug dealer (4.6% - 12.0%). For opioids, the second most common source was from a physician. The misuse of opioids, stimulants, tranquilizers, and sedatives poses significant risk for physical and/or psychological dependence as well as overdose.

this is a serious problem, that requires no legal action;
merely some responsibility and accountability by parents
to secure their medications and not provide a convenient
source for their children to get high from the home
medicine cabinet