Prescription drugs are being called the new gateway drugs – not because they lead to taking other drugs, which is what marijuana is known for, but because they have overtaken marijuana as the first drugs people take illegally. And that has a lot to do with the reason why we have a prescription drug addiction epidemic.

There’s a big difference between smoking marijuana the first time you take drugs and taking a prescripion painkiller, sedative, tranquilizer, stimulant or antidepressant. Smoking grass isn’t good – it can cause physical and emotional problems and impair thinking and motor skills just like any other drug – but not too many people die from it, or turn into drug addicts who would sell their grandmother for a hit.

But that’s not the case with prescription drugs.

Here’s what the Prevention Services department of the East Alabama Mental Health Center had to say about prescription drugs in a recent news item:

“When taken without medical supervision, intentionally abused, or mixed with other drugs or alcohol, prescription drugs can be both dangerous and addictive. A single large dose of prescription painkillers can cause breathing difficulty and lead to death. Stimulant abuse can lead to hostility, paranoia, heart failure or fatal seizures.

“Even in small doses, depressants and painkillers affect motor skills, judgment and the ability to learn. Long-term risks include the potential of addiction and relying at an early age on a drug to cope with life’s stresses establishing a learned, lifelong pattern of dependency. It is also illegal to purchase medications without a prescription and to share or sell personal medication.”

A concise and accurate statement of the dangers – with one exception, all that stuff can happen even if you were prescribed the drug by your doctor. Why do you think drug companies are paying out billions every year in lawsuits? It’s not the people who are using them illegally that are suing them. It’s the one’s who got them from their doctors.

The only winners in the prescription drug game are the drug companies. It doesn’t seem possible that we let companies continue in business when their primary goal to is impair everyone’s awareness and ability to think and do by drugging them. And I mean everyone, they’re even trying to get unborn children tested now to see if they can find a way to drug them, too. But, that’s what we’ve got.

If someone you care about is on prescription drugs, prescribed or not, find out if they’re really necessary and, if not, get them into prescription drug rehab.

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The lockers of the students in three schools in Massachussetts were K9 searched for drugs earlier this week. They caught one kid, with a lot of marijuana – all bagged up and ready to go. He’s been arrested. The searches were done to demonstrate the zero tolerance policy of illicit drugs in schools – the only problem is that illicit drugs are probably not the major problem. What they need to focus on is prescription drugs.

Prescription drug addiction and abuse is more popular among teens these days that marijuana. OxyContin and other opiate painkillers, stimulants, tranqilizers – the kids get them free from their parent’s medicine cabinets, give them to their friends, take them to parties where they’re thrown in a big bowl so kids can take whatever they want, not even knowing what the drugs are – that’s what the schools are really up against. And it’s the hardest to detect. K9s are trained to smell Xanax.

Truthfully, half the kids in school could have been high that day – having a good laugh afterwards. If the kid who was arrested doesn’t go to jail, chances are he’ll start dealing prescription drugs instead. And while the search will certainly keep marijuana, heroin and speed out of the school – which may help – what’s really needed is a body search and a urine or other type of test that will identify the presence of prescription drugs. Only that way can you stop prescription drug addiction or abuse.

I admire the fact that law enforcement is doing something about the drug problem in schools – but they’ve got to get the right target. Then they can find the kids with a problem and get them into prescription drug rehab for help. 

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A second methadone clinic is opening in Pennsylvania, where heroin addiction is “rampant.” Methadone clinics are controversial – some says it’s trading heroin addiction for methadone addiction and, in fact, it is. Even the director of the clinic, Glen Cooper, acknowledges that methadone treatment is not a cure, and that it ”works best” in tandem with counselling. Which they also deliver. The counselling, I assume, is an actual drug rehab program that gets people off drugs completely – heroin and methadone.

The public in the area are suspicious – they don’t want a bunch of ’drug addicts’ around, and they don’t particularly care what drug they’re taking. Cooper’s response? ”I think people should keep in mind that people in methadone treatment programs, if they are successful, are no longer using drugs and don’t need to steal.”

I’m not sure what he means by ‘if they are successful,’ or they ‘are no longer using drugs.’ Does he mean that if they’re successful they’re no longer using heroin or methadone? If that’s not what he means then, yes, they are using drugs. They’re using methadone.

True, they don’t need to steal. They get their drugs from the clinic and it’s either free – not likely, since it’s a for-profit organization, or they’re relatively inexpensive.

Either way, it would be nice if we could expect something more than  they ‘don’t need to steal’ from a drug treatment facility. Sure, that’s a step in the right direction but how many are actually taking the next step – becoming completely drug-free?

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