Survey says some parents are ‘passive pushers'

Officials say the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse’s back-to-school-survey sends “a very strong wake up call” about the “high risk of becoming drug abusers in school.” According to Gary W. Smith, CEO of Narconon Arrowhead, a residential drug and alcohol treatment center, “the survey will hopefully help parents realize that the probability that their kids will become part of the next generation of drug addicts and alcoholics is now higher than ever before.” Over a third of teenagers surveyed (between age 12 and 17) said that they had abused prescription drugs they had gotten from their parent’s medicine cabinet. Another third who abused prescription drugs said they got them from other friends at school. “If the one-third of kids using meds got them from parent’s medicine cabinets, it doesn’t take rocket science to figure out where the one-third of the students who were selling prescription drugs to the other kids are getting them from,” Smith said. “That means that over half the teenagers surveyed abusing prescription drugs were getting them directly or indirectly from mom and dad’s medicine cabinet.” The center has named a new type of drug pusher: the ‘passive pusher.’ “If you are the parent of a teenager and you have prescriptions for potentially addictive drugs like Oxycotin, anti-depressants, sleeping pills or tranquilizers, and do not keep them in a locked, secured cabinet, then the ‘passive pusher’ is, unfortunately, you,” said Smith. For more information on drugs, drug rehabilitation or drug education and prevention, call 800-468-6933 or visit www.stopaddiction.com.