Pubdate: Wed, 16 Jun 2004
Source: Chicago Sun-Times (IL)
Copyright: 2004 The Sun-Times Co.
Contact:  http://www.suntimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/81
Author: Cindy Richards
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/youth.htm (Youth)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?195 (Partnership for a Drug Free America)

DRUG RISK NO ONE TALKS ABOUT

An eighth-grader I know and love is in a rehab program. Her drug of choice? 
Coricidin cold medicine.

Turns out she is not the only kid who has found a way to get high off the 
products commonly found in our medicine cabinets and on drugstore shelves. 
The number of calls to poison centers across the country about the abuse of 
cold medicines containing dextromethorphan, or DXM, doubled in the last 
three years, according to the American Association of Poison Control 
Centers. In 2003, the centers took 4,382 calls about DXM -- 3,271 of which 
involved teens. Separately, the U.S. Substance Abuse & Mental Health 
Service Administration reports that 2,311 people were admitted to emergency 
rooms in 2002 for over-the-counter medicine overdoses.

Experts at the Partnership for a Drug-Free America are in the midst of 
surveying young people about their experience with drug use. For the first 
time, the interviewers will ask whether the youths have abused 
over-the-counter medicines.

Until they have that data, researchers aren't too worried about kids 
abusing cold pills. They're much more concerned about kids abusing cleaning 
products.

This practice, known among the hip set as "sniffing" or "huffing," involves 
inhaling the poisons that are used to propel cooking spray, the fumes from 
gasoline or any of 1,000 common household products.

The last survey of drug use conducted by the Partnership, released this 
month, found a stunning one in four eighth-graders admit to having inhaled 
household chemicals to get high. Even more shocking: Less than half of the 
sixth-graders polled say they believe it can kill them.

How wrong they are.

This is a drug of choice for the middle-school set. Minor side effects 
include headaches, muscle weakness and mood swings. But sniffing highly 
concentrated amounts of some chemicals can be seriously harmful. It can 
cause irreversible central nervous system or brain damage, liver and kidney 
damage, even induce heart failure and death. On the first whiff.

As a parent of two soon-to-be middle schoolers, I'm officially freaked. 
Will my kids look in my medicine cabinet when they want a little buzz? Or 
under the sink where we keep the hard stuff?

While I was fretting over the news that Coricidin can kill (it's the 
dextromethorphan in the cough and cold formulas that gives abusers the 
high), the folks at the Partnership are much more worried about the 
inhalant issue.

"None of these [inhaled] substances is designed for human consumption. 
[Dextromethorphan] is; propane is not," said Steve Dnistrian, executive 
vice president of the Partnership for a Drug-Free America. "It's a scary 
thing."

That's why his organization launched a national program in the mid-1990s to 
let kids and parents know just how dangerous sniffing can be. There is no 
similar scare for over-the-counter medicines. Yet.

In fact, the Partnership chose not to begin a national education and 
awareness campaign about abuse of over-the-counter medicines.

"There's a fine line in this business of prevention: Do you wind up 
educating kids about behavior you're trying to prevent," he said.

The Partnership sees abuse of dextromethorphan as "fringe behavior," 
Dnistrian said. One kid finds a Web site extolling the virtues of this 
over-the-counter high and tells a few friends. So, rather than launch a 
national media campaign, the group opted to fight a Web problem on the Web 
with a site that shares the unappealing stories of kids who drank bottles 
of cough syrup.

The key to protecting kids, he said, is to educate ourselves as parents. We 
need to shake our unshakeable belief that it won't happen to our kids -- 
the one belief common to all parents, he said.

"When I go out to talk to a school, there are 50 parents there. When I go 
out to talk to a school after an overdose, I get 300," Dnistrian said.

On the plus side, there is plenty of research telling us how to keep our 
kids from using drugs. Key among those findings: Kids whose parents 
regularly tell them about the risks of drugs are less likely to use them.

Or you could try the approach Dnistrian's dad used to keep him off drugs: 
"He threatened to break my knees.
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