Prescription Drug Use Down; Illicit Drug Use Remains Steady
Posted on September 10, 2009Although the number of Americans abusing prescription drugs dropped by about 1 million from 2007 to 2008, the percentage of people using illegal drugs has held steady over the same time period, according to a new national study.
The 67,000-person study shows that more than 15.2 million people in the US admitted taking a prescription drug for non-medical reasons in 2008, compared with 16.3 in 2007.
Although the survey doesn’t discuss why rates of abuse rise and fall, part of the drop may be attributable to a nationwide media campaign aimed at alerting parents to the potential abuse of prescription medicines.
Robert Denniston, director of the National Youth Anti-Drug Campaign, a program run out of the drug control program in the White House, says it’s always hard to "unravel all the multiple factors" that contribute to why people abuse prescription medicines and other drugs.
But he says a push by the federal government and a host of anti-drug organizations and local communities to alert parents about the potential perils of giving kids easy access to prescription drugs is having an impact.
One effective advertisement, Denniston says, ran during the Super Bowl. It featured a drug dealer outside a store bemoaning the loss of all his customers. “It seems like half my customers they don’t even need me any more, ya’ know, I mean they are getting high for free, outta’ the medicine cabinets," the man says. "How am I supposed to compete with that?"
While prescription drug abuse rates have dropped, others haven’t. The survey, conducted by the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, or SAMHSA, shows that marijuana smoking rates for teenagers held steady and the number of LSD and Ecstasy users continue to climb.
The survey also shows that the rate of abuse of pain relievers, which include commonly taken drugs such as Tylenol, dropped year over year. However, the percentage of patients taking the powerful painkiller Oxycontin increased, said Joe Gfroerer, a statistician with SAMHSA.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has been working with drug companies to create mechanisms that make it harder for the medicines like Oxycontin and Tylenol to be abused.
