Pubdate: Tue, 08 May 2007
Source: AlterNet (US Web)
Copyright: 2007 Independent Media Institute
Contact:  http://www.alternet.org/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1451
Author: Dani McClain, WireTap
Note: Dani McClain is a reporter at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. 
She serves on WireTap's advisory board.
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/hr.htm (Harm Reduction)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/oxycontin.htm (Oxycontin/Oxycodone)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/youth.htm (Youth)

MEDIA HYPE ABOUT PAINKILLERS SHOT DOWN

Shira Hassan has read the research that says prescription drug use is 
up among young people.

But annual reports like the government-funded " Monitoring the 
Future" don't often reflect what she sees working with 12- to 
23-year-old women in Chicago's sex trade, said Hassan, co-director of 
the Young Women's Empowerment Project.

These young women don't reflect the reported youth opiate craze, and 
painkillers like OxyContin and Vicodin aren't in unusually high demand.

"Spikes are media-driven," said Hassan, whose group is rooted in the 
principles of harm reduction. "The spike is more of a spike in the research."

Authors of the University of Michigan study, a composite of 50,000 
8th-, 10th- and 12th-graders' disclosures about their drug use, 
started asking about OxyContin and Vicodin in 2002. And 2006 was the 
first year they included questions about over-the-counter cold 
medicines, as though sippin' on some [cough] syrup were brand new.

Last year, peer outreach workers with the Young Women's Empowerment 
Project talked to more than 400 girls in the Chicago area who were 
trading sex for money or drugs. More than half of those conversations 
were about drug use.

What they're using is what Hassan has seen consistently over the 
years: marijuana and alcohol are most prevalent, followed by crystal 
meth, heroin, ecstasy, powder cocaine and other club drugs.

"I haven't met a kid who their primary passion is pills in a long 
time," Hassan said.

Where prescription drugs like Xanax, Valium and Ativan do come into 
play is in combination with other drugs. These pills are 
benzodiazepines, the "downers" that calm the nerves or ward off a 
crash as the high from cocaine or meth subsides.

But if this is new to researchers, it isn't to users.

"That's been going on since the beginning of time," Hassan said.

What is relatively new is recreational prescription drug use among 
the population university researchers can access easily: middle-class 
teenagers who go to school.

And among this group, yes, access to parents' pain pills and the 
exchange of Adderall and other drugs prescribed for attention-deficit 
disorder and depression are increasingly common, said Marsha 
Rosenbaum, a medical sociologist and director of Drug Policy 
Alliance's Safety First project.

The 2006 University of Michigan study reports that 9 percent of high 
school seniors had used a prescription narcotic in the previous year, 
compared to the just over 4 percent who had used ecstasy.

One reason for this comparatively high use is the medical community's 
shifting approach to pain management, Rosenbaum said.

"You have a little surgery, you get some pills," she said of young 
people's access to adult family members' prescriptions. "To doctors 
these days, Vicodin is like aspirin."

Rosenbaum doesn't suggest restricting people's ability to alleviate 
their pain, but she does say parents should throw away or lock up 
their unused meds. Even more important is realistic drug education 
that teaches young people to reduce harms associated with drugs if 
they do choose to use them, she said.

And because young people know exactly what they're putting in their 
bodies when they use prescription drugs recreationally, Dan Bigg of 
the Chicago Recovery Alliance sees their use a sign that more young 
people are taking the principles of harm reduction to heart.

With these drugs, there's less of a crapshoot around how much to take 
or potentially dangerous fillers.

"The Internet provides a wealth of information," Bigg said. "It's 
easy to read about it and understand dosage. You have an opportunity 
to do that, that you don't [have) with illicit drugs."

Of course, abuse can still be a problem. Ninety minutes north of 
Chicago in Racine, Wis., Sammy Rangel is seeing the young people -- 
mostly white boys -- who get caught stealing cough medicine from 
local pharmacies. He also sees the teenagers hooked on OxyContin.

A director of the street outreach program at Racine's SAFE Haven 
youth shelter and a licensed drug and alcohol counselor, Rangel 
shares Hassan's skepticism that there's a recent spike in 
prescription and over-the-counter drug abuse. He doesn't see it among 
the population he works with: primarily black and Latino youth 
between the ages of 13 and 25.

The biggest change he's seen in the last year is the increase in 
young black men snorting heroin.

"That was something I hadn't seen in a long time," Rangel said. "You 
worried about a kid getting a hold of crack."

This trend follows a boom in heroin sales in nearby Kenosha in the 
early 2000s, and now the drug is big among 16- to 25-year-old black 
men, Rangel said. They're adamant that they never shoot the drug, but 
he thinks a stigma often forces injection users into silence.

"You're a partier or a casual user if you're snorting it, but you're 
a dope fiend if you're shooting up," Rangel said.

Marijuana is big among the younger teenagers he works with, which is 
no surprise except he thinks the volume -- some talk about smoking an 
eighth of an ounce every hour or two that can have long-lasting 
effects, including severe memory loss and motor skill deterioration. 
Rangel said the glorification of blunts in pop culture is partly to 
blame for skewing conversations around moderation.

"Nobody talks about joints anymore. I think they get laughed at," he 
said. "It's one thing to smoke marijuana, it's another thing to 
saturate your system."

Rangel also worries about the crack cocaine and PCP that sometimes 
make their way into blunts.

But Googling prescription drugs isn't the only way to steer clear of 
unforeseen toxins. At the Young Women's Empowerment Project, people 
do still talk about joints, and on a recent day Hassan overheard a 
13-year-old girl asking how to tell whether one had been rolled using 
papers laced with embalming fluid.

A 19-year-old colleague of Hassan's used the peer education model on 
which the organization prides itself. Without judgment, without 
shaming the girl into clamming up, the staffer started brainstorming 
ways the younger girl could stay safe.

Hassan watched the two puzzle through the problem together:

"If you're out with a guy, don't let him smoke you up," the colleague 
suggested. "Roll from your bag. Don't carry too much. Teach yourself 
how to be in charge of your drug use."

Dani McClain is a reporter at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. She 
serves on WireTap's advisory board.
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman